


Doubts Don't Deter Detectives II

by amindamazed (hophophop)



Series: Doubts Don't Deter Detectives [2]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Community: watsons_woes, Fake Marriage, Gen, JoanBellFest2014, Original Character(s), Prompt Fic, Road Trips, Trope Bingo Round 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-05 09:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 21,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/amindamazed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"We're about to sit around for a very long time, aren't we."</em><br/>Pieces written for the Watson's Woes 2014 <a href="http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1045173.html">July writing prompt challenge</a>. Most of the chapters will be standalone ficlets, if <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/873944">last year</a> is any indication.</p><p>chapters 1-10 are practice prompt fic; 11-41 are the main challenge fic, and 42-44 are amnesty fic.</p><p>chapters 11-17 also fill <a href="http://fyjoanbell.tumblr.com/post/87506319286/hello-fellow-fans-here-are-the-prompts-for-the">JoanBell Fest</a> prompts. If I can manage to knock off a couple of my trope-bingo squares at the same time, so much the better.</p><p>Chapter 17 is also a fake marriage fic; chapter 23 features faking a pregnancy for a case.</p><p>The Continuing Adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson begin with <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1813216/chapters/4276917">chapter 27</a> and continue through chapter 41.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bodyguard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 1: a mysterious message

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missing scene from episode 1x04, Rat Race.
> 
> _“Hence my use of the word ‘mysterious’.”_
> 
> * * *

They were shown into a conference room with amazing views. Joan was immediately drawn to the windows and only belatedly realized the woman who’d escorted them there was indicating which chairs they should take and asking if they wanted anythng to drink. Sherlock declined for them both which deprived her of a second of admiring the city laid out below to complete the obligatory eye roll. At least he was polite to the woman, acknowledging her difference in status from the executives he was there to meet in a way that made his disdain for them readily apparent. The woman was too professional to express any reaction to his unprofessionalism other than a prompt exit to leave them alone in the room.

Joan reluctantly turned away from the glass and saw the empty chair next to Sherlock at the foot of the enormous conference table.

“Are they expecting me to consult too?” They hadn’t actually discussed her role in the little drama he was enacting here.

“I couldn’t care less what they expect. If you don’t want this chair, take another. Or lie down on the floor under the window and take a nap, if you like. It’s their job to impress me, after all. I haven’t accepted anything except the invitation to their little mystery.”

“Well, if your plan is to avoid introducing me altogether, then I’ll just sit over here. I’d rather not have any questions directed at me.” That garnered her an excessive raise of his eyebrows, presumably at the very notion his audience would have eyes for anyone but him.

“That’s an excellent plan, Watson. They won’t know what to make of it, which will make my job easier.”

“Disconcerting them helps you deduce?”

“It can. But mostly it will amuse me greatly to watch them squirm, wondering who you are and why you’re here.”


	2. Confidences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 2: In a minor key. Use the POV of a minor character in some way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be part of a new epilogue to a story I wrote last year, [What the Beekeeper Saw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/683280). POV is an original character, Ed Bere, the niece of Edson the gardener and beekeeper whom Sherlock knew at Hemdale. In my story, Sherlock hired her to tend his hives while he was in rehab. have no idea if this bit can standalone, sorry.
> 
> _“There was a client back here a little while ago, ah, who was also interested in beekeeping.”_
> 
> * * *

“He never talked about you, you know,” I blurted out, surprising both of us. Mr. Holmes had been waiting for me outside my uncle’s hospital room and said he was free until Joan finished an meeting in about an hour. We’d chatted about his bees for a while but when that petered out, he checked messages on his phone while I fretted in silence over how to entertain him without a rooftop hive to engage us.

Now he looked up calmly from urban beekeeping guide he’d pulled from the pile of books I had stacked on the floor under the wall-mounted tv screen, one eyebrow raised in question. I panicked. “I mean Uncle Ed never said anything about how you met. I mean, I know where, but I don’t know why. I mean, I’m not asking! I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.” Oh my god, would the babbling never end? “I’m sorry, this is stupid. I’m just tired.”

I bent over the magazine in my lap, face burning. If one is going to die from embarrassment, a hospital room is not the worst place to do it, I suppose. Should have signed a DNR though. And I’m a terrible person for even thinking of a joke like that when my uncle almost died of a stroke. I winced when Mr. Holmes cleared his throat.

“He made that clear when he referred me to you.” He paused and glanced over where my uncle lay, unresponsive and tethered to machines that spoke in graphs and numbers Mr. Holmes probably could read fluently. “He is…protective of you. Proud, too. It was quite the audition, to be allowed to request your beekeeping services. And the first ground rule he laid was no mention of my drug history. From which you may deduce the obvious.”

That he had one. A drug history. I nodded, still looking down at my lap, mortified at having brought this up at all. I still don’t know where it came from.

“I imagine Watson’s history is less obvious. Or was, then, in any case.” The silence stretched out, and I realized a bit late that he was asking. Giving me a chance to change the subject, which I grabbed like the lifeline it was.

“She told me she was a doctor when… Last week, when she ran into me coming here the day Uncle Ed was admitted. But back then all I knew was that you’d known each other a long time.” I remembered the first time I went to the house after he’d moved back. We’d corresponded by email since I started checking the bees, months before. That day was when I met him in person, and Joan too. “Uncle Ed never mentioned her. Actually he was surprised when I told him about running into you both at that beekeeper meeting, which is how I learned he had met her too, that same week; I remember because it was an odd coincidence.”

He frowned, considering something. “Hmm, the case we finished that week was an especially ugly family entanglement.” He closed the book and shrugged his shoulders up, stretching. “You and Watson chatted over coffee, as I recall. I suspect I was not very good company.” Another pause, and he started tapping the fingers of his left hand over his thumb, forward and back. “If you don’t mind indulging me, what told you I’d known Watson a long time? I don’t believe she even came up to the roof that day.”

It was an odd question, but I owed him, after the train wreck that started this conversation. I thought back, not sure I could separate out those first impressions from the other times I’d seen the two of them since.

“I guess the most obvious thing was living together. In the same house, I mean,” I said, foot-in-mouth again. I still don’t know if they’re living-together living together, now or then. “Um, not that that always means anything.” I remembered following him up all those stairs, pausing while he sparred with Joan who’d only just woken up, and finding it odd to see people in the house when it had just been me and the bees when I stopped by those months he was away. “The way you talked to each other, I suppose. Even when you were arguing, it was familiar. Reminded me of fighting with my sister. A kind of acceptance, maybe? Like you were sure of each other even if you disagreed about something.”

“Hmm.”

“I actually. Um.” No going back now. “I thought about you. Both. Sometimes. I think about bees a lot. Obviously. And sometimes I’ll think about the hives, and the incredible intricacy of all those movements and individuals working separately and together, simultaneously. And then I get to stretching it into metaphor and wondering about human families and how we mostly don’t get along it seems. So the few examples of healthy families stand out. Like you and Joan.”

He looked at me, confused, as if I’d switched to a language he didn’t understand.

“Is that not—? Sorry. If I’m saying the wrong thing. Never really meant to say it at all…”

“No, no. It’s remarkable. I admit I very rarely consider what our partnership looks like from the outside.” He looked over at Uncle Ed again. “Watson and Edson talked about me, the day they met. When I found out, I was… It made me angry. But clearly your uncle recognized that Watson was trustworthy, and I should have trusted his judgment.”

“I can imagine why he trusted her. I did, too. When she listens to you, you really know she’s _listening to you_. You know? Sad, I guess, that that’s a rare thing.” It hit me then, and I started to cry, turning away from Mr. Holmes for both our sakes.

“Your uncle is like that as well,” he said gently, and I nodded, eyes closed so I don’t know if he saw. Nobody else in my family knew me like Uncle Ed did. Really heard me. I wasn’t ready to let him go.

I sniffled a bit and wiped my nose on the crumpled paper napkin I’d stuffed in my pocket after lunch. A jaw-cracking yawn overtook me; it seemed to go on for a minute, but at least it interrupted the tears.

“Perhaps some rest is in order. Watson is excessively fond of sleep but she does have a point that sometimes it is the best option. Many studies show sleep deprivation exacerbates emotional stress.”

“And make you babble and blubber like a fool.”

“I have experience with more fools than you can imagine, Miss Bere. And I know Watson could tell you how often I’ve been one. As the greatest authority on foolishness in this room, I can confirm you are not.” I forced a little smile to acknowledge his efforts.

Two nurses came in then to change Uncle Ed’s sheets and check for pressure sores. Before I managed to pull myself upright, Mr. Holmes had already slipped across the room and murmured quietly to one of them.

“Come along, Miss Bere, there’s a quiet room for family members where you can lie down for a spell. You don’t want to inadvertently doze off once your uncle awakes. Besides, if you’ve fallen asleep in that chair when Watson returns, there’s the chance she’ll test your reflexes or perform some other so-called painless experiment to wake you up. She once threw a jacket on my face, if you can believe it.” I relented at his mock aggravation and let him lead me out of the room.


	3. Technical Draw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 3: action!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wordcount: 221b
> 
> * * *

Her knuckles stung, but she mostly felt the impact in her elbow. Need to ask Tania about her form next time at the boxing gym. Focus, she scolded herself, ducking under the suspect’s swing. His anger made him easy to dodge but not so easy she could let her mind wander. Unfortunately, his long reach came with bodyweight sufficient to make the attic floor creak and then squeal beneath them, and she scrambled backwards toward the line of nails that marked the support beam. The board snapped under his foot and his leg dropped through. Angry creases on his forehead shot up three inches in surprise, and the expression on his face would have been funny if the jagged edge hadn’t severed his femoral artery at the groin.

“No!” she yelled as he struggled to get free. “Stop moving, put pressure!” She crawled around toward his side, away from the weakened section of floor. He swung his arm out in her direction and screamed, curling in again toward his leg. His head sank down, and she managed to reach him in time to pull back so that he fainted away from the hole. The wound was poorly placed for a tourniquet, and though she pressed as hard as she could, he was dead long before Sherlock arrived to call the bout.


	4. Knee-jerk Reactions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 4: Cliffhanger!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for the end of season two.
> 
> _“You feel the need to assert that control in some demonstrative if ill-advised fashion.”_
> 
> * * *

“MI6? What the hell?! I’m just moving a few blocks away! I wasn’t quitting! I’m not quitting, not like you. I’m staying. And you, you selfish petty asshole, you’re the one leaving me.” She stopped pacing in front of the table she’d thought of as hers and rested both hands on it. Her head dropped, and her whispered words scattered across the messy stacks of papers and books. “Just like— I’m a fucking idiot.”

He continued to stand at the threshhold between lock room and study, shaking in his aggressively formal posture, ramrod-straight back and rigid arms by his sides, which at least was better than the unnerving creepy menace she’d witnessed a few times. The veins in his temple and neck pulsed. Her pulse pounded at the same tempo.

“I don’t know if this is simply how you are or if it’s a defense mechanism you learned as a kid or if it’s an addiction reflex, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. You think this is all about you, and I clearly can’t say anything to convince you otherwise. And consequently, you’ve made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I’m not staying for this.” She pushed back from the table and let her arms hang, refusing the impulse to shield herself with them. “You were wrong.” He met her defiant stare with his own. “Like I said, you _can_ make connections. And they frighten you. When they don’t go as you expect. God forbid someone should ask for something in return. And then you do everything in your power to, to gain control of them. And when that doesn’t work, you sever them to prove your point.”

She walked past him, and her keys clashed on the lock table where she dropped them. “Congratulations. You’re right again.”


	5. No Reliable Way to Test the Hypothesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 5: musical prompt: pablo de sarasate - hommage à rossini, op.2 ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jTlRwezR04))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wordcount: 221b
> 
> _“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything remotely modest.”_
> 
> * * *

The music stopped just as her tea finished steeping, and Joan paused at the not-quite closed doors to his room, cup in hand, peering through the opening before nudging it wider when Sherlock noticed her there.

“What was that? It sounds familiar.”

“You mean—?” He played a few seconds of the tune she recognized.

‘Yes, that one.”

“ _That_ was Rossini. What you heard before was this,” and he played a few more seconds of something that was almost identical. “That’s Sarasate, overtly plagiarizing, brazenly exploiting, or humbly honoring Rossini, depending on your opinion of the matter.”

“And what is your opinion of the matter?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Seriously? A subject about which your opinion is irrelevant?” She clutched the neck of her t-shirt. “I think I may faint.”

He glared a moment and resumed the piece, speaking over the music. “Sarasate’s _motivation_ —“

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” She dismissed his correction with her tea hand and shoved the pile of sweaters out of her way with the other as she settled down on his couch. “Less talking, more playing.”

He blinked, and she thought he almost looked embarrassed before squaring his shoulders and turning his back to her. “I don’t recall issuing an invitation,” he sniffed before replacing his chin.

“Hmm,” she said into her tea, and he raised the bow.


	6. Silence and Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 6: writer's block

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: not a happy tale.
> 
> _“She died. We were quite close. I did not take her passing well.”_
> 
> * * *

Holmes has written hundreds of letters, thousands of handscribed words, millions of keyboard strokes. Monographs, articles, reports, posts, entries, screeds, analysis, erotica, propaganda, and persuasion. Elaborately constructed falsehoods and the rare admission of truth. His mind gushed forth an infinite fount of language, never questioned. Moving between verbal and written came as naturally as the flips and dives of a swallow’s flight.

The silence that grounds him now is as great a shock as what brought it about.

He perceives the torrent of communication that bursts forth from everyone around him but it seems Watson severed the volume control.

As a child, the flood of words and sensations within and without overwhelmed him with their many possible meanings. Gradually he learned to filter, sort, interpret, and direct. His ability to conduct the torrent turned cacophony into symphony, and the glorious patterns of observation and deduction freed him to live with the incessant input that never abated. When not being completely honest with himself, he blamed his own curiosity and impatience for the decision to test drugs as a tool for manipulating and managing data.

When not being completely honest with himself, he underappreciates what — who — illuminates his podium now. Underappreciated.

The moment he saw the blood in Irene’s flat, it was as if all sound exploded, filling his mind with screams and thunderclaps. With iron will he forced a path through the tempest to focus on details but too soon he weakened. Stimulants had already become a regular part of his process; increasing the dose was a logical step. It was the only logic he could find in a world suddenly blown apart into chaos.

The moment he saw the blood in Watson’s flat, it was as if all sound was extinguished, like a candle blown out. He felt the vibrations in his vocal chords like the last whisps of smoke from the wick, her name the last word in his mind like the fading ember at the tip. Then it went out, and language went with it.

This is a blessing, as he turns once more to the paper where dark lines and loops mark the top and he can’t read the story it succinctly defines. He’s supposed to do something with it. Fill in the blank space, explain, find meaning in meaninglessness. It’s as impossible a task as describing light. He pushes the page aside and goes up to the roof. He can’t hear the bees anymore, but maybe a pattern will emerge from their activity. Or not; they will pay him no mind either way. Their indifference is the only comfort he can feel.

As he climbs the stairs, the sheet flutters unnoticed to the floor under the table, a bright flash in shadow. The words fall face-down: Requiescat Joan Hui Watson, 1968-2014.


	7. Through the Looking Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 7: and we are merely players. Take inspiration from this cartoon [cartoon caption: what if there’s a parallel universe where fictional characters are real and real people are fictional characters and your favourite character runs a blog & writes fan-fiction about you.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also fills [trope-bingo round 3](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/tropebingo_round3) "amnesia" card.
> 
>  _“It’s a man-made chemical from the polycyclic hydrocarbon family. It’s like we thought._ This _is a mutagen.”_
> 
> * * *

The voices were muted, as if a towel blocked the speakers. If she weren’t so exhausted, she’d get up and move it out of the way. But if she stayed still and kept her breathing quiet, she could hear well enough. And having to strain a bit heightened the suspense and helped keep her mind off more troubling details.

“It was a very powerful hallucinogen. Engineered and customized for an individual neurochemistry. It might have had mild to moderate psychotropic or physiological effects on anyone who ingested it, but only one person would have reacted with this degree of severity.”

The detective’s tone implied some impatience with having to explain the obvious, although she suspected he was more worried than he’d ever admit. The usual trope.

“How long are the effects going to last?”

“The intent of the designer appears to have been for it to be permanent. The dose was not directly administered; rather, the substance was a mutagen that changes the function of certain parts of the endocrine system to produce the compound naturally, as it were.”

“Okay, but what’s the treatment?”

“Right now? Time-travel. Return to the moment before it happened and prevent it. Or jump to a future where genetic therapy has advanced sufficiently to repair the damage and obtain an antidote.”

“Holmes—”

His companion sounded even more impatient, no-doubt irritated by the other’s flippant response. She hoped they weren’t going to switch to some sort of hybrid murder-mystery-science-fiction story; she was pretty sure the back cover hadn’t said anything about that, or she wouldn’t have bought the book.

“There is no treatment, Captain! She is trapped as surely as if she were encased in cement. I hired seven geneticists to work on the problem, but that’s roughly equivalent to relying on seven toothbrushes to remove the cement.”

Ah, good. No actual time machines likely in the second half. She could only suspend her disbelief so far, and antisocial genius detectives were far enough. Maybe this one would crack under the strain and show some weakness for once. He already made a mistake that got his partner in trouble; she wouldn’t mind if the story ended with him unable to save the day. The neat last-minute solution model was boring after who knows how many times she’d heard it. Let the hero face his failings like everyone else, no genius ex machina fix.

“So we just have to wait, while—“

“While she believes herself and us to be characters in a detective novel, yes. And we might as well be, for all the good it will do to try to convince her otherwise.”

She frowned, disliking this turn in the story. It was getting too complicated, too far from the simple procedural format she sought to escape from the other complications she didn’t want to face. She rolled over away from the speaker and dragged a pillow over her head to block the sound. Now she could hear low mumbles without being able to discern the dialogue; harmless white noise that would ease her to sleep. When she woke up, she’d delete the novel from the hard drive and find something else to read instead.


	8. Ignition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 8: poem
>     
>     
>     I BREATHED enough to learn the trick,
>       And now, removed from air,
>     I simulate the breath so well,
>       That one, to be quite sure
>     
>     The lungs are stirless, must descend
>       Among the cunning cells,
>     And touch the pantomime himself.
>       How cool the bellows feels!
>     
>     —Emily Dickinson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wordcount: 100
> 
> _“Unless of course, you don’t think you have the stomach for the work I do.”_   
>  _“I’m good.”_
> 
> * * *

Not since her first client had she felt this close to the edge of losing control of the relationship. It felt good: no time for idle self-recriminations with his constant challenging. Of her tolerance, her competence, her integrity. Those were fairly standard client aggressions, but she had to admit disturbing her gorge was new. Still, at the crime scene she felt the heat of excitement that wasn’t based in panic for the first time in years. 

Dodging his jabs was easy, but she was going to be exhausted by his relentlessness. Better set two alarm clocks just in case.


	9. Discretionary Funds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 9: Charity. We know ACD Watson volunteered for the military, and volunteered to be Holmes' biographer, and went to great lengths to help others. We know Holmes solved cases for nothing, and showed great compassion at times to technically guilty parties. What other good works did they do? Whether it's a Victorian good deed, or a modern campaign such as [this indiegogo campaign to help save the bees](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/six-legged-bigfoot-the-fall-and-rise-of-the-western-bumblebee#home), have a character volunteer, or show them engaged in some act of charity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I didn’t realize that you were paying me with his money.”_
> 
> * * *

“Did we get paid yet for the last case? I can’t find reference to a deposit in the account.” Joan stretched the kinks out of her neck and leaned back from her desk toward Sherlock who sat at his, typing rapidly.

“Erskine Enterprises?” His fingers didn’t slow at the keyboard.

“No, the one before that. Cordage.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm yes or hmm no?”

She was interrupted by a text from Bell, and replying involved checking another set of files for the answer to his question. The open ledger on her laptop reminded her of the conversation. “Well?” He didn’t respond. “Sherlock.”

“I agree with you,” he mumbled, flipping pages in the ebook now filling his screen.

“Oh for—“ She got up and turned his monitor off, batting at his hand when he tried to turn it back on again.

“What—! This childish interference doesn’t show you in a good light.”

“Neither does yours. Just tell me what’s going on with the Cordage case.”

He refused to make eye contact and continued scowling at the blank screen. “Nothing’s going on, as I assumed you would have been able to deduce by now. No. We have not been paid, nor are we going to be.” He reached again for the on button and she flattened her palm over it.

“Okay… Care to explain?”

“Not at all.” He pushed back from his desk to get up, and she dropped her hand, exasperated.

“Sherlock, would you stop treating every question I ask like an interrogation and just respond like it’s a normal conversation?”

“It’s good practice for you.”

“It really isn’t. And why aren’t we getting paid for that case?”

His shoulders slumped as he gave in, scooting his chair back in place. “The woman’s barely making ends meet between her student loans and the pittance she makes as a halfway house manager. She’s willing to maintain a dropbox for us there, which will come in very handy.”

“Okay, any particular reason why you didn’t just mention this to me earlier? I’ve been waiting to close last month’s books for that check.”

“I wasn’t in the mood for a debate.”

“First of all, you are _always_ in the mood for a debate. Second, since when have I quibbled over payment in kind? Half the private cases we take work like that.” She flicked the monitor on again as she pulled back her hand. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

He heaved a sigh. “As you know, it’s recently come to my attention that our financial state is more fragile than I would like.” He pressed his lips in a tight line and tapped hard on the edge of his keyboard with one finger. The silence stretched out, and when she didn’t move away he sighed again.

“And…?”

“And I felt myself at an impasse: irresponsible to our partnership on the one hand, irresponsible to a client in need on the other. I chose what I thought our priorities should be but…”

“But you don’t know if it was the right decision,” she concluded.

“It was the right decision,” he insisted. “At the same time, it was also an imprudent course of action, under the circumstances.”

“Which are?”

He shifted his feet back and forth under the chair a few times before setting them down and dropping his head to look at them a moment.

“My obligation to you.”

“Oh.” She started to continue and stopped, stepping back to pull up the stool and sit off to the side of his desk. “Okay. Well. It’s a ways past the one-year mark. And I've been thinking... I'm not really comfortable with that original arrangement, now. Maybe it’s time we renegotiated the terms.”

His eyes widened with concern. “You don't want—?”

“I don’t want to be paid by you any more. Out of your savings or your father’s funds. No more stipend: I want to support myself again. I think we can do it and still have leeway for circumstances like Ms Cordage. I’d like to try.”


	10. Landmarks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> practice prompt 10: The Grand Tour. Travel is supposed to broaden one's mind. Did it work for the character of your choice?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I grew up in Queens.”_
> 
> * * *

1618 Putnam Ave, #4, is where Joan Watson came home from the hospital, aged three days. 

The alley behind the Quik Fix Repair Shop, now a RadioShack, is the first place she ever saw a dead body. She was five years old, and the worldly older brother — nine or ten — of one of her kindegarden friends showed them the remains of a rat next to the dumpster. He teased his sister, offering the stick he used to poke it. She refused, but Joan’s need to know was greater than any squeamishness, and she wasn’t afraid to see what lay underneath. 

The Montgomery Funeral Home is the first place she ever saw a dead human being, her stepfather’s cousin who died of a heart attack at age 53. Joan was 14 and too embarrassed to tell anyone how anxious she was about the open-casket viewing beforehand or how disappointed she was afterwards that she felt nothing in the moment. Maybe if she’d known him when he was alive it would have been different. She revised that speculation later, after several more deaths of people known and unknown and the resulting unpredictability of her reaction. She cried for two hours after the funeral of another cousin a decade later, who had bone cancer and died when she was just a year older than Joan. They hadn’t been close; met no more than once a year. But the threat — this could happen to me — and the unfairness — her life is _over_ already — overwhelmed her. 

Knollwood Park Cemetary is where Joan learned to love running, until the winter of her senior year in college when she slipped on ice and broke her ankle. She didn’t get back to it again until Emily dragged her out of her apartment which she hadn’t left in the three weeks since the Castoro lawsuit. Emily favored routes along the river but Joan preferred the lawns and trees of the larger parks. No more cemetaries, however. 

The last apartment Joan had in Queens burned to the ground a week after she moved out. She was working nights as a surgical resident, and three casualties were directed to her hospital from the fire. Two of them died, one while she was working on him. Liam lost everything. She let him crash at her new place, and it was another six months before they broke up again. Not for the last time.


	11. Unexpected Weight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [01 july prompt: Danger: Slip/Fall Warning Sign](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1048617.html)  
>  also trope bingo prompt (round 3 amnesty): bets/wagers and joanbell fest day 1 prompts: lock and key, shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“We will work this out, I know we will.”_
> 
> * * *

“Here’s the last one; I don’t know how you managed to fit it all in there,” Marcus said as he passed the shoebox over to Joan for the the hall closet. “Man, it’s heavy!”

The side of the battered shoebox tore as he let go, and twenty-odd padlocks thudded to the floor, two landing on his foot which made him jump up in pain, inadvertently knocking her in the chin with his elbow so she bit her tongue. He recoiled and overcompensated, tripping over the locks and falling over. They exclaimed simultaneously.

“Fuck that hurts!”

“Ah shit!”

And spoke in unison again,

“Don’t tell Sherlock.”

“Don’t tell Holmes.”

They held the same beat of silence before he snorted and she coughed to cover a stilted laugh. He grinned to himself and looked up to share his amusement at their ridiculous injuries and ask if she was okay, but the glint in his eye faded when he realized she wasn’t holding the humor of the situation.

“Am I missing something?” Marcus asked, scooting back to lean against the closet door and push the locks into a pile with his good foot. “I just didn’t want to give him any more fodder for police incompetence. Although they say it was damn hard to choreograph and perform those Keystone Cops routines.” One side of her mouth quirked, but her attention was focused on the locks. “Did you take his favorites without asking, or something?”

She shook her head and squatted down to collect a handful of them. “No, he gave me these a while back. It’s not the locks. It’s…” She stood again and dumped them on a closet shelf. “I meant, you probably don’t want to mention helping me out.” She frowned, and Marcus didn’t know what to think. “It’s a sore subject, that’s all.”

“What, helping you move?” He grabbed a few more locks and pushed up, dropping them next to the others, and brushed off his hands. “You make it sound like he’s jealous of lugging boxes,” and he laughed before the thought sank in. “Wait, are you—? Is he—?” A few pieces fell into place even as he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of… He didn’t even know what. Violence? Emotional abuse? Holmes could be a controlling asshole, but he’d never gotten the sense of the two of them involved, not like that. There were jokes around the squad, of course, and the guys who always had to have a game running had a betting pool, but that was what, like a year ago. But to think he’d missed it, right in front of him—

“No! Oh god, sorry. Nothing like that. We’re not— It’s just—“ She bit her lip and sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. The last thing I want is to complicate your relationship with him.” She took a deep breath in and out. “He’s worried my moving out will compromise our work. That’s his priority: the work. It’s always present in his mind, always in process for him, and when I was always at the brownstone, it always came first. But now…”

“Now you’re setting your own priorities, and he thinks he’s going to suffer for it.” He bent down for another handful of locks, equal parts relieved and annoyed by Holmes’ self-centeredness.

“He thinks the work will suffer,” she corrected, pushing the locks on the closet shelf toward the back and taking the next set from him.

“According to him, it’s the same thing,” he countered, and she tilted her head to the side in agreement.

“I—“ she started and stopped, frustrated, like she couldn’t say what she wanted to say. “It’s going to take some time to adjust. For both of us. I don’t think it will be the disaster he’s making it out to be.” She frowned again, and he knew she wanted to say more. If this were an interrogation room instead of an afternoon helping a friend… She was obviously in the middle whether she wanted to be or not.

“For all of us. We’re pretty used to having Holmes and Watson at our beck and call, too.” He could have kicked himself at the stricken look on her face and held up a hand. “No, wait. None of us work the hours you guys put in. It’s been a luxury but hardly a necessary one. Regardless of what Holmes thinks, we do manage to catch the bad guys on our own now and again.”

“Yeah, okay. Over-inflated self-importance is _not_ one of the skills I meant to pick up. Sorry.” He shook his head, refuting her apology. “It’s just. It’s important to me, too. This work, and making it work, with Sherlock, and me not living there. I needed my own place.” She looked away, across the short hallway toward the tiny dark bedroom and the marginally larger and brighter living room. “I need it,” she repeated, and he blinked at the low urgency in her voice that vanished as she continued. “He just needs to have a little faith that the work will continue here as well as there.”

“Now that you mention it, I’m kinda surprised he’s not here already, trying to stake a claim.”

She picked up the last of the locks, pushed them with the others in the closet, and closed the door. “I know. Or at least letting me know the eight ways somebody could break in.”

“Well he would have done that — or demonstrated it — the first eight times he came over.” When she didn’t agree, he realized. “He hasn’t been here yet.”

She shook her head, tight-lipped, and stepped away down the hall, disappearing into the shadows at the bedroom door. “I think the kitchen box with my glasses ended up in here; let me get them, and we can have a drink before you have to go.” Her muffled voice sounded far away, and he stood in the dim hallway, wondering what their odds were for a happy ending.


	12. Next of Kin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [02 july prompt: animals animals animals](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1055036.html)  
>  also joanbell fest day 2 prompts: looking down, secrets, housewarming gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Clyde will likely outlive both of us."_
> 
> * * *

The third time Joan cracked her head on an open library cabinet because she was looking down to avoid tripping over Clyde was the last straw.

“It’s time, Watson.”

“If you would just remember to shut the damn things, or better yet remove them for all the good they’re doing ‘keeping the dust out’ when you never close them—“

“I’m not going to subject my library to the elements—“

“‘The elements,’” she scoffed. “This house was brand new in 2034 with state of the art hvac and a mold spore wouldn’t last five minutes. I’m not having this conversation again.”

“Twenty-year-old ‘state of the art’ anything is not a strong argument. Clyde is 53. He could live another twenty years or more. You and I, beneficiaries of exemplary genetics though we may be, almost certainly will not.”

He watched her remove the coldpack from the top of her head and gingerly test the area with her other hand before putting it back up again without making eye contact with him, clearly unwilling to concede the point. Whether the point was about Clyde’s eventual demise or their own, he didn’t know. He got up, muttering under his breath, pushing all the glass doors of the bookcases closed as he went past, the ones left ajar and the ones already shut. He came back to her a moment later with his tablet in one hand, holding it out to her.

“What’s this?”

“Marcus.” She looked at him sharply. “He sent it to the joint account! How many times do I have to _not_ hack your account for you to let that go? Marcus writes that Aloma… well, she’s not doing well, and he and Noor are taking the grandchildren. Rather, they’re going to them, that is. They’ll be moving so the girls can stay in the same schools.”

“Oh, that’s hard. But they’ll be so much closer! It would be lovely to get together more often.”

“Indeed. And a respectable senior tortoise would make a handsome housewarming gift.”

“No. No! You do not give pets as gifts like that. That’s not fair to anyone. Including Clyde. Besides….” She pursed her lips and set the cold pack down next to her on the couch. “I happen to know that Marcus doesn’t like tortoises. Or reptiles in general, but definitely not tortoises.”

“And how did you come to deduce this?”

“I didn’t. He told me.” She looked up at him, considering. “It was the second time you went away.” They both frowned at the memory and moved past it, not wanting to dwell. “I was going to be…I wasn’t going to be at the brownstone for several months, and I asked him if he could take Clyde. That’s when he told me.”

“I’m surprised. I would have predicted he would take advantage of the offer to ingratiate himself; if I recall correctly, that was the year he was trying to get into your bed.” He bent down to collect Clyde and return him to his habitat. He almost didn’t catch her muttered reply.

“That was the year he succeeded, you mean.”

He turned to look at her, dumbfounded, mouth agape. “You told me— Forty years, and you—“

“It was thirty years ago, not forty.”

“He’s had designs on you for forty.”

“—And thirty years since it ended, too, and how many have there been, in all that time, in your bed?”

“I don’t have a bed,” he grumbled. “And never Marcus.”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t run off that time, who knows what might have happened?” She gave him her speculative look, the one reserved for the more outrageous suggestions that he never could quite tell were made in jest or not, not even after forty years. He loved that look.

“I tell you what,” she continued, “Let’s ask them how the kids feel about Clyde. Maybe we can work something out.”

“We usually do,” he observed.


	13. Superpowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [03 july prompt: I never get your limits.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1061236.html)  
>  also joanbell fest day 3 prompts: smoothie, integrity  
> and further inspired by the tags on this [texts-from-the-brownstone entry](http://amindamazed.tumblr.com/post/90712493738)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I was valedictorian. Just sayin'."_
> 
> * * *

Joan crumpled the sandwich wrapping into a ball and dropped in in the paper bag sitting on the center console. She and Marcus were three hours into what was looking to be an all-night stakeout. Sherlock was banished to another car around the block after he wouldn’t shut up about their car being in the wrong place. She suspected there would be yet another detective who wouldn’t want to work with them by morning.

Marcus picked at her fries resting precariously on the dashboard and slurped loudly through his straw. “Sorry,” he said. “Keep going; the suspense is killing me.”

“So after Carrie’s car was stolen from the community center parking lot, we broke into the building and raided the lost-and-found box. I cut my hand on the window I smashed to get in. I didn’t know how to pick locks then, so I couldn’t get to the bathrooms or kitchen for anything to stop the bleeding. The shirt was the cleanest thing available. My hair reacts badly to chlorine. _Really_ badly, like fingers-in-an-electric-socket badly. The only storage cabinet I could jimmy open had toilet cleaner, two plungers, and a dozen packages of zip ties.”

Marcus just stared at her.

“One of which I used to hold my hair back.” Her tone supplied the implied _obviously_.

“Right…. Sounds like you know a bit more about criminal activity than you let on. But what does any of this have to do with the topic at hand?”

“Well, not only did the adrenaline keep me focused on the exam, but there was an extra credit question based on case study scenario about a wound from broken glass. And that is how skinny dipping saved my GPA.”

“Your superpower is naked breaking and entering?”

“Well, if you’re going to put it that way… It’s true that if we’d waited until we got to the pool to take off our clothes, I wouldn’t have had to break the window to get more. But we didn’t want to leave any evidence at the scene if they did have a security guard checking the site. It was an excellent plan until Carrie forgot to lock the car. If I had ventured out to a life of crime, she would have been a terrible accomplice.”

“Your superpower is clearly _not_ getting to the point.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s improvisation — making the best use of the tools at hand to resolve or improve my situation. When I was little, my mother used to call it landing on my feet.”

He swirled the remaining inch of smoothie before popping off the lid and tilting back to finish it off and dropping the empty cup in the cup holder. “Just one more thing...”

“I left a note and went right back after I finished the exam to make arrangements to have the window repaired. _Officer_.” She made a face. “They were kind enough to spot me the boxers, shirt, and zip tie.”

He look down and smiled, nodding. “And how’d you do on the exam?”

She gave a pleased hum. “A+.”


	14. Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [04 july prompt: poem](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1066584.html), from "[Song of the Banner at Day-Break](http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1881/poems/153)" by Walt Whitman.  
>  also joanbell fest day 4 prompts: escape, moving on, apocalypse; bonus: brothers, Sherlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Neither of us really goes out much. At all, actually."_
> 
> * * *

Joan slammed the book closed and dropped it with a thud on the floor next to the couch. “I can’t do it, I just can’t do it,” she said, pushing up to step over to the front windows which were open to catch the delicious breeze outside. “I’ve got to get out of here and feel something other than dead trees in my hands.” She turned to face Sherlock with determination, daring him to object. “This is not a day to be spent inside preparing to solve hypothetical murders. Unless we get called in for a real-life homicide in the next two hours, I’m going to the beach.”

At the lock table, his hands hovered four inches above the model he was building of the train trellis that may or may not have played a role in the cold case Gregson pushed on him last week. She thought it looked like he was using uncooked spaghetti for the scaffolding. He raised an eyebrow at her vehemence but refrained from commenting so she took a deep breath. “For the weekend.”

It took two hours to find a two-night rental for less than $500 given the short notice, but Emily’s daughter’s soccer coach’s brother had a place with a last-minute cancellation in Ocean City. A train and a bus and another bus and a taxi, and she was collecting the key to the studio two blocks from the beach. She could even see a sliver of sea from the front window, and when the wind blew landward, she could hear the waves. Heaven.

No doubt he’d monitor her movements with the GPS tracker they both had installed on their phones. She didn’t want to dwell on what it meant that she accepted that as a necessary precaution, albeit one that really made no pretense whatsoever of disguising his invasive streak. Still, passive surveillance was her new normal, but active attempts to keep tabs on her were something else entirely. She told Sherlock no texts unless there was an apocalypse or the brownstone was on fire.

“And what if I am set ablaze?”

“Then call 911. And if you have to stay in the hospital longer than I’ll be away, let me know Sunday afternoon so I don’t order too much takeout for dinner.”

There would be passive aggressive and just plain aggressive repercussions on her return, but today the sky was deep bright blue and the humidity had evaporated, and there was no reason not to seize the day. And now, all alone in the tiny efficiency unit, barely fifteen minutes into her first vacation in years, she already felt more relaxed in she didn’t know how long.

She fell asleep listening to the ocean and woke up nine hours later, with no memory of dreams. She felt ten years younger, except ten years ago she was running herself ragged to overachieve as a surgeon and hadn’t really relaxed since she graduated from medical school, six months before she met Liam.

The day looked to be as gorgeous as the one before, and she was out on the boardwalk before 8am, just her and dog-walkers and a few other early birds. She stopped at the first diner she came to and discovered its startlingly tasty donuts. She decided on the spot to linger there with the local paper and coffee refills and and donuts until the place filled up and she couldn’t justify holding the table any longer. Another 45 minutes, she guessed.

She was reading the police blotter when she thought the recognized the voice.

“No, you can’t have a dozen donuts for breakfast. We’ll bring a dozen back after you eat something not made of sugar, and you’ll have to share them with everybody else.”

That garnered a chorus of whines from perhaps three voices, one of whom concluded with “…but Uncle Markie…”

She turned and saw Marcus walking up to the “please wait to be seated” sign that hadn’t been put out yet when she got there, shepherding four kids: three boys not yet teens and one older girl, as tall as him and standing a bit off to the side, steadily ignoring the others in the guise of reading a paperback. “Little, Mark— watch your brother doesn’t get underfoot, alright?” as he looked around for someone to seat them.

She took a last swig from her cup and half stood up. “Hey, Marcus.” The girl looked up and saw her immediately; it took Marcus another moment to see who was calling him. She waved at him to come over to her booth.

“Joan! Last place I would have expected to find you and Holmes. Are you guys here on that cold case?” His eyes narrowed as he observed her table: paper open to the police news section but remnants of a place setting for one.

“Nope, I excused myself for the weekend on account of the weather.” She flipped the newspaper closed, squelching a guilty squirm for what she’d been reading and then confusion over what she was supposed to feel guilty about. “For another 36 hours, I am on vacation.” Telling herself as much as him.

“Well I’d say me too, except instead I’m working overtime with these guys. These are my cousin’s kids: Miguel, Mark, and Rafael. And the tall one’s Andrea. Their parents rent a place out here every summer. Everybody, this is Ms Watson. I work with her sometimes.”

One of the boys, Miguel she thought, looked interested. “You’re a cop?”

“No. But I do help solve crimes.”

“You have a gun?”

“No I do not.” Miguel shrugged, losing interest, and they were all on the verge of clogging up the narrow aisle. “Why don’t you guys take the table. I was just finishing up.”

The boys started sliding into the booth immediately, but Marcus tried to pull them back.”Mark, hold up. You sure? We don’t want to push you out.”

“No, I was lingering past my welcome now there’s a line for seats.” She gestured to the door, where several people now stood. “It’s good.” She slid out and pulled the paper and her wallet to the end of the table. “Maybe I’ll see you at the beach this afternoon?”

“That’s the plan, as much as we can make plans with this crowd.” Andrea, who had already slipped past Joan to wedge herself into the far corner of the booth, as far away from her brothers as possible, snorted without looking up from her book. Joan smiled at her, unseen, remembering being the odd kid out on summer excursions with her family. There were always lots of kids Oren’s age but rarely any for her. Half the time that was just fine.

The waitress came up then, and Joan stepped out of her way. “Enjoy breakfast. Good to meet you all.” The boys were squabbling over their silverware and Andrea was deep in her book. Marcus looked exasperated and turned to her apologetically, reminding her of how she felt sometimes with people left in Sherlock’s wake. But she wasn’t going to think about that today. She smiled and gave a little wave. “It was a nice surprise to run into you like this. I’ll look for you this afternoon.”

“Their parents should be with us then. I might be let off ‘uncle’ duty for a bit.” His attention flowed over each child in turn, and it looked to her like he didn’t actually mind uncle duty at all.

“Sounds good. See you later.”

Outside on the boardwalk, she meandered a bit before heading back toward her rental. Running into Marcus was pleasant, but she didn’t enjoy the sudden self-imposed pressure, to be social, or heaven forbid, be professional. Other than when she visited him in the hospital, they’d never spent time together that wasn’t work-related. She stopped at a bench facing the ocean and sat down. You’re over thinking this, she told herself. Marcus looked happy to see her, and relieved, even, maybe, when she told him she wasn’t here for work. She wanted to carve some space for herself outside of Sherlock, but her initial efforts — well, Emily’s initial effort — flopped. She had high hopes for her new apartment, though. And while technically Marcus didn’t qualify as not-Sherlock-related, maybe he could be, under the right circumstances. Like a gorgeous afternoon at the beach.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she hesitated before pulling it out, betting with herself over burning furniture or statistical speculation on a world-destroying asteroid. But it was Marcus.

_Hope you don’t mind, Andrea wants to ask you about medical school. If we see you later._

_Which I hope we do._

She slipped the phone back into her pocket and looked out across the ocean and the dark blue line where it met the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, I didn't do justice to the actual meaning of Whitman's poem but rather jumped off from the imagery in the excerpt given in the prompt, taken entirely out of context.


	15. Stilled Keys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [05 july prompt: makes the music mute [with image of a tree growing through an upright piano]](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1072529.html)  
>  also joanbell fest day 5 prompt: windows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"When the smoke clears, the body of a man will be found."_
> 
> * * *

He should have realized the silence was a symptom, not a reprieve.

The fire at Diogenes would have been suspicious enough on its own, coming so soon after the murder of Mycroft's boss. When Holmes didn’t immediately appear, demanding files and lambasting everyone in the vicinity of the investigation, Marcus knew there was more going on than he’d probably ever learn. Or, honestly, want to. The bitter taste that had mostly faded after he was shot haunted the back of his throat again, ever since he dug up the police record for Mycroft and Holmes all but admitted withholding evidence and implied he’d been involved with a whole lot more.

And Joan— he didn’t know what to make of her. It’d been over a week since she stopped by his desk on her way in or out of the station. She never did follow up on those Interpol files she asked him to find. That was Holmes-level arrogance, and combined with actual Holmes arrogance pissing him off, he wasn’t feeling generous about double-checking on something that was probably just for Holmes anyway.

He saw her through the windows of the conference room a few days later. She was alone, standing by the table and organizing files into an archive box; he caught a flash of West’s armless body as she slipped the photo into a folder. She turned suddenly and snatched up her phone, but the caller ID obviously wasn’t who she was waiting for, and she set it down again almost as fast. Then she sank into a chair like she was melting; for a moment he thought she had fainted.

Somebody dropped a metal evidence box down the hall, and he jumped, heart slamming in response to the memory of gunfire. When he looked back to the conference room, Joan was standing again, hands held oddly in front of her. But it was the expression on her face that shocked him, because it was the same one he’d felt on his own every time the nightmares jolted him awake that first month.

Other details fell into place. The way she’d hung back in the morgue when they discovered what happen to West’s body. That night they were slammed when he showed up, asked for help, and vanished right after getting a call from her. And whatever the hell cloak-and-dagger threads making up the tangle Holmes had them dangling in. He walked up to the door slowly, moving back and forth a bit so she’d notice his approach through the glass before he opened the door.

“Hey,” she said, her voice soft but not betraying anything. “Did you need something?”

“No. Just haven’t seen you around this week. You and Holmes working a private case?”

“Um. No. He’s in England. Making arrangements for the funeral and dealing with…what you have to deal with, after. He’ll probably be there a few weeks.” She folded her arms across her chest and then dropped them to pick up another folder. Her fingers worried the edges.

“I wondered about that. You’re not going?”

Her body language said she wasn’t going to be divulging her secrets, but she shook her head in answer. “Sherlock didn’t— He made it clear he needed to do this on his own. And it’s his family, after all.”

It sounded like something she’d rehearsed before saying it. The usual light in her eyes was gone. “But you knew his brother, right? Did you want to go?”

She pressed her lips tight and just barely shook her head. It wasn’t an answer.


	16. Traces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [06 july prompt: For me?: A botanical gift (from someone known or unknown).](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1077923.html)  
>  also joanbell fest day 6 prompt: injury  
> 100 words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I’m able to detect the fragrance of carnations, but no carnations ever appear at the brownstone.”_
> 
> * * *

Sherlock’s queasy look redoubled her sudden feeling of unease. The heart-rate monitor had barely measured an increase before he was out of his chair and past the half-pulled privacy curtain. Then she recognized the smell.

“Wait, Holmes, what are—“ She heard shoes scuffing the linoleum floor and Marcus’s protest as Sherlock pulled him away. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the crinkly hospital pillowcase, concentrating on her breath rather than flashes of memory.

They returned a few minutes later, heralded by the odor of strong coffee that washed over the fading hint of carnations.


	17. An Elaborate Ruse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [07 july prompt: Wrong!](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1085162.html)  
>  also joanbell fest day 7 prompt: silhouette, blankets, fake marrieds; bonus: first kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"As an institution I think it’s outlasted its usefulness by quite a large margin."_
> 
> * * *

“This is the twenty-first century; there’s no reason why you couldn’t do this with Marcus instead of me. I’m really not a very good actor.” Joan tugged at the skirt’s side seams, irked by the lack of pockets. In front of her, the foot of her bed was littered with the various accessories and toiletries needed for the day’s transformation.

“The utterly convincing manner with which you make that declaration suggests otherwise.” Sherlock’s hands were smugly ensconced in two of his many pockets, and he bounced a bit on his toes.

“But—“

“You lost the coin toss fair and square. Anyway, it’s your turn.” His fidgets turned to pacing, and he ended up by the closet, fingering the lace hanging off a hook on the door.

She was beginning to feel trapped in the room and started pacing herself. “What are you talking about, my turn? We’ve never done this before.”

“Then next time I shall make the sacrifice.”

“Next—!” She stopped abruptly, on the far side of the bed from him. “Never mind. Just pass me the damned veil.”

“You make a lovely bride, Watson,” he said primly, neatly sidestepping the hairbrush as it flew past.

They held the ceremony on the roof, with the bees as attendants and a couple of undercover agents as fake witnesses. Sherlock officiated, having been internet-ordained some time previously for another case. Marcus looked more nervous than she felt, which helped. She was surprised by Sherlock’s words, which went beyond the bare minimum required and actually expressed thoughtful sentiment she knew he didn’t believe in. He appeared surprised by their kiss, which she had to admit also went maybe a little beyond the strictly required minimum. They hadn’t discussed it, but she trusted Marcus and hoped he trusted her. It was nice. Okay, more than nice. It may or may not have planted a seed. She’d have to wait and see.

The “honeymoon” was a night in a B&B on Staten Island, and afterwards she crashed at Marcus’s apartment until the sting concluded a week later. Marcus attempted to do the chivalrous thing but she insisted he keep his bedroom; his couch was plenty long enough for her and quite comfortable.

On the third night, when the blackmailer still hadn’t contacted them to threaten to expose their fake marriage, they were both too keyed up to sleep and stayed up watching stupid tv and talking. Joan kept thinking about the memory she’d had as a child of what she had been sure was her parents’ wedding. She told Marcus about the fight she’d had with Oren when she was seven and he ten over the pictures in the family photo album.

The first page clearly showed wedding photos, her mom and her dad, and her and Oren. She’d been livid when he pointed out that it obviously wasn’t her mother’s first wedding. And obviously he’d been correct, and her mistake only made her madder. She couldn’t have been at that original wedding. But in her memory that logic had never fully formed; there was one wedding and three parents and of course she would have been there because it was her story.

“Three parents?” he asked.

“My parents divorced when I was a baby. I was three when the album wedding happened.”

“Do you see him? Your first dad?”

“I haven’t seen my birth dad in a while. He….” She swallowed, hesitating, and then took a deep breath and spoke quickly. “He’s schizophrenic and was institutionalized or homeless most of my life. I haven’t seen him in a few years.”

“Oh, wow. That’s…that’s hard. But you’ve been able to stay in contact some of the time?”

“Yeah. We were lucky. He’s been lucky.” She looked down at her hands and toyed with the new band on her ring finger. “I hope he’s still lucky.”

“My dad wasn’t… It was just me and Andre and my Mom, growing up.”

“That’s hard, too.”

“Hmm.” She watched his profile as he watched the talk show on the television; the main living room light was on a timer that had flipped off an hour before, and the flickering light from the tv alternately revealed a silhouette, garishly lit profile, or a shadow she could barely perceive. He clearly wanted to talk about his absent father even less than she was able to talk about hers. She eased a little more into her pillow. Her feet were still curled up tight against her but her shoulders relaxed a bit.

He hit the mute button when the talk show shifted to commercials. Her head tipped back against the couch, eyes drooping. She felt the cushions shift as he changed position. “You falling asleep?”

“Mmm. Just resting my eyes.”

He laughed softly. “I’ve heard that one before.” He turned off the tv and put the remote down on the table as he stood up. “Keep on ‘resting your eyes’; I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” she mumbled. “G’night Mr. Watson.”

“Sleep tight, Mrs. Bell.”

“That’s Ms.” She stretched her legs across the warm spot where he’d been sitting but didn’t open her eyes. “Ms Bell-Watson-Watson-Bell. To you.”

He pulled the fleece blanket over her feet, but she didn’t stir. When he woke up in the morning, the coffee was ready, and a soft breeze came in from the little balcony where she stood looking out over the day just beginning.


	18. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [08 july prompt: There has been some villainy here.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1090549.html)  
>  Takes place during 2x01 and makes reference to information revealed at the end of season 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Yesterday I would've told you he doesn't have a brother."_
> 
> * * *

Like much of France, the operatives of _Le Milieu_ using Diogenes took August holidays, so Mycroft was checking in with his handler just once a week. As a result, he’d only been informed that morning of Sherlock’s intent to come to London regarding that washed-up DI he used to badger. It hadn’t occurred to him he’d bring his companion, so he didn’t immediately realize who she was when he found her standing in his home.

He’d never seen a photograph of her, but her accent tipped him off, and the details fell into place just in time for him to expect Sherlock’s bellow from upstairs. It was clear where they all stood from Sherlock’s puerile introduction and Miss Watson’s evident surprise as his very existence. A misstep, on Sherlock’s part, leaving him a blank slate with which to present himself to her. Sherlock would regret that tactic soon enough.

It was immediately obvious they weren’t intimate, never had been and, if he knew his brother at all, probably never would be. The reports he’d seen since Sherlock’s release from rehab had speculated upon the possibility, which he’d discounted then and saw now his assessment was accurate.

As a very young child, his brother went through a phase of brumotactillophobia before their father implemented a correction. For all his affectations of eclecticism, Sherlock assiduously maintained a strict separation of variables. Emotional attachment and physical expression did not come together in Sherlock’s world unless he was very angry indeed. And it was immediately clear that there was a high degree of emotional attachment here (an intriguing puzzle in its own right). At least on Sherlock’s part; Miss Watson would take him a little longer to interpret.

Of course Sherlock would suspect him of planning that particular crass retaliation immediately, but the irritant of being deduced didn’t dissuade him from the thought. Sleeping with his brother’s partner would, in addition to its own satisfactions, nonetheless offer an excellent opportunity to rebalance their relationship.

As West’s increasingly sporadic reports had trickled in over the last year, he wasn’t surprised to learn that Miss Watson had started working with Sherlock in this new capacity, only that she had continued. Over the years he’d observed Sherlock repeatedly attempt to share his skills. (Not with him, of course.) Sherlock didn’t reach out, exactly, but he clearly experienced some satisfaction from imparting not only what he knew but how he came to know it. For all his boundless ego, he was not at all possessive of the abilities he cultivated. Rather, he wanted to share the methods along with the results. Quite desperately, in fact, and it was his inability to maintain that link to others that produced the sour mood that so often accompanied his presence.

Somehow Joan Watson held on despite, or was not put off by, Sherlock’s failings at interpersonal connection. In her professional capacity as sober companion, this was no surprise, certainly, but to have stayed on, willingly? He saw no indication of dissembling that morning when she claimed Sherlock was her friend, and despite being jet-lagged and abandoned by that ‘friend’ was fully capable of resisting his own mild attempt to overrule her so that he felt chastened in his own kitchen. No doubt she had extensive opportunity to flex that strength of will with Sherlock. And with that came the first inkling that she might be someone worth getting to know for her own sake. The available data suggested he should proceed with caution given his upcoming responsibilities in New York; there were too many unknowns. His brother, however, was not one of them. Sherlock didn’t change, and that infuriating stubbornness was, at least, predictable. He could work with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [brumotactillophobia](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/11/26/food-no-touchees-defeated-again/) is the fear of food touching other food. If someone has a more authoritative link, please let me know.


	19. Ow!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [09 july prompt: Choose your own (mis)adventure.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1096019.html) Use one or more of the following words in today's entry: pratfall, spit-take, faceplant, head-smack, double-take, slip.  
>  Takes place immediately following 1x16.  
> word count: 221b

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"In case you haven’t noticed, the only person who has been hurting me? Is you.”_
> 
> * * *

She should have seen it coming. So to speak. Throwing the basketball at him wasn’t the conclusion of the matter, by any means. If anything, he redoubled his nagging about protecting herself now that she had agreed to continue working with him in this new capacity. And he continued his “tests.” She stopped turning her back on him in the house after the third tennis ball. Trip wires might appear in any room, at any height, at any time, although unscrewing the eye bolts that secured them to the moulding slowed him down a bit. She couldn’t bring herself to threaten either Angus or Clyde, and she knew he wouldn’t believe her if she did. Retaliation in kind was always an option, but she didn’t want to live in a frat-house world of never-ending practical jokes and pratfalls. 

On the plus side, and she was a little disturbed by the fact she could see it that way, he respected certain boundaries: no attacks while she was in her bedroom or the bath, and none outside of the brownstone. He was infuriating but principled in his own peculiar morality, and she couldn’t fault his logic; there was no good reason not to learn self-defense. She just didn’t want to set a precedent of appearing to accede to his bullying.


	20. Will Be As a Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [10 july prompt: a sporting chance](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1100005.html)  
>  title from “[To Begin with, the Sweet Grass](http://yearsrisingmaryoliver.blogspot.ca/2011/01/to-begin-with-sweet-grass.html)” by Mary Oliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"We will work this out; I know we will."_
> 
> * * *

The new skylights in the renovated attic made this floor, now a single open space instead of the warren of under-lit cubbies and closets it used to be, his first choice for working these days. The soft light was bright without glare during the day, and under the right conditions stars were visible through the glass at night. It was a shame she’d be giving that up soon. He was mostly reconciled to the inevitability, even as he exercised his prerogative to judge.

“Staten Island,” he said to the book open on the table in front of him, a 20-year-old popularization of genetics and sports medicine that appeared to have been covertly plagiarized by the inept post-doc the forensics lab was using as a consultant.

“Hmm?” Watson didn’t look up from the papier-mâché sculpture she was constructing, intended as a decoy for their current case. She’d become quite proficient in the last few years. He paused, calculating. Bit more than “a few,” even taking into account her most recent absence. Certainly they’d generated enough shredded paper in all that time to be repurposed this way.

“It’s overdue, and the anticipation of disruption is becoming more distracting than the disruption itself will be.”

“Uh huh.”

He pushed up from the table with a huff, but her concentration didn’t waiver. Not even a flicker of movement in her cheek to suggest she was provoking him, so he stood still, looking out the front windows and counting his pulse.

At 171 she stepped back, stretching her arms up behind her head, careful not to get the sticky residue in her hair. “Okay, what’s that about Staten Island? A problem with the ferry?”

“You’re finished with that?” He tilted his head toward the sculpture.

“Oh no, it will probably be another two days before I can paint. That’s still within the original timeline, yes?” He nodded. “Good. So what does Staten Island have to do with it?”

He returned to stand by his table, back to her, before replying. “Nothing at all with the case. I’ve merely concluded that that’s where you’ll be moving next.” He found comfort in the fact that she had, to date, spent more than twice as much time living at the brownstone than elsewhere, but he knew the limitations of descriptive statistics.

He heard her loud sigh. “Oh, so now you’re kicking me out preemptively instead of ignoring me outright or simply slipping out first before I’ve finished packing?”

The urge to rub the frustration out through his hands battled with a wish to mute that tell, but his back was to her and what did it matter anyway. His fingers scraped lines down his thighs, and he wished she’d get it over with so that she could return again. But apparently she was intent on making it harder before it got easier.

“Seriously, Sherlock. What is this about? Why now?”

His heart rate had increased by five beats per minute since this conversation began, and he pressed his palms on the table, taking a slow breath to compose himself before turning around.

“Over the past 20 years, you have removed yourself from the brownstone three times, for an average absence of 2.2 years occurring at an interval averaging 3.4 years. The last two departures were preceded by new hobbies of an athletic nature, neither of which continued, although you still have most of your cycling gear from the end of interval three which leads me to hypothesize—"

“Hold on. You’ve calculated…. Of course you have.” Her brows furrowed, apparently doing the math herself. “You’re including the first eighteen months, obviously.”

He sniffed.

“And I’ve stayed this time about a year longer than ‘average’.” She waved the air quotes one-handed.

“Longer than both mean and median values, yes. Although it’s not yet a year longer than the median. It’s been—”

“Four and a half years,” they both said at the same time.

“You know it’s a not a lot of data to generalize from,” she added.

A shrug.

“And how does Staten Island fit into your prediction?”

“Your previous forays to Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Brooklyn again offered little geographic novelty. Queens would be more of the same. The Bronx is a possibility, but…”

“It’s a sound theory, but this time you’re wrong.”

“Inwood?”

She laughed. “Do you want to keep guessing? ‘Cause you’re basing it all on a false assumption.”

He frowned, feeling a bit of tightness in his chest. She couldn’t mean New Jersey. His eyebrows raised. Or further.

“It’s not a bad guess,” and this time he knew she was provoking him and merely pursed his lips. “Staten Island would be different but would also feel closer—“

“—To Major Crimes, and the bulk of our cases have been south of 125th, yes—“

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

He scowled at the floor, exasperated by the quibbling. Unless.…Was she— There’s been no indication, he was sure, but she’d done the unexpected before. He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Do you mean… Are you done?”

“I think so, yes.”

It took a moment for her words to propel him across the room so quickly she took a step back in surprise. He didn’t know what to do with his shaking hands. “But— No! We’re still needed. The work never ends, and so neither can we, not like that—“

“—Sherlock—“

“We have our students, yes, of course, but it’s not the same at all. Our collaboration is critical, it’s the very core—“

“Hey! Would you listen to me for a second? I’m not quitting or retiring, okay? God, if you jumped to conclusions like this in our investigations, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because nobody would have worked with us. Ever. Now calm down and come over here.” She gestured for him to accompany her to the sitting area on the other side of the room where two large upholstered chairs were arranged under a skylight.

Once they were settled, she appearing relaxed and him feeling quite the opposite, she continued. “Your theory’s right; Staten Island would offer geographical variety my other places didn’t have, and I’d like that. But more to the point, it would also feel closer—“

“—To the work, yes I know—“

“—To home.”

He looked over, eyes a little wide.

“I’m done moving out. I don’t need it any more.”

He noticed his mouth had dropped and snapped it shut, studying her intently for any clues that would contradict her statement. No good came of relinquishing a perfectly good hypothesis prematurely. “What changed?”

“Well, a lot of things, over the years. But the last straw, the final piece of the puzzle, was you. You changed. The last time, which I’m sure your data can confirm, was my shortest time away, and that’s partly because you didn’t give me any shit about it. You moped, of course, but you didn’t treat it like a betrayal, and you didn’t treat me like a traitor. You believed me that I was still your partner, just as I have been all these past twenty years, no matter where I lived.”

“We orbit each other,” he said, and she smiled in recognition. No good came of retaining an hypothesis when the initial premise was dismissed, either. “I said I would change for you, didn’t I. Really Watson, at some point you should learn to accept my word on these things.”

He let his forearm flop outward, elbow resting on the arm of the chair, palm open and within her grasp, should she choose to mirror his gesture.

“At some point I probably will,” she said.


	21. Colony Collapse Disorder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [11 july prompt: save the bees!](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1104741.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“It should not be able to reproduce with other kinds of bees.”_
> 
> * * *

“The Euglossa watsonia are dying.”

They were in a cab on the way to interview a witness. Sherlock spoke in the same detached manner he always used with her now. No more shouting, no more non-sequiturs, no more barely contained exuberance.

Joan was at the brownstone first-thing almost every day if she didn’t meet him at a crime scene or the station first. She answered every text, although he sent only strictly work-related messages, and picked up every call. She shared photographs of the collages she created on her own walls when he refused to set foot in her new place (“Wouldn’t want to intrude”).

She said nothing when he declared he was still working with MI6 except to comment that she’d have more opportunity to log her 10,000 hours on the private cases he’d have to pass up for that other commitment.

Their collaboration still worked; criminals were caught, and lives were saved. But it was wearing thin, as if they were using up what had been built between them without renewing the bond.

There were no tantrums or unkind words expressed, but no kindness either. She felt starved for a moment of that prickly easy camaraderie that once bloomed between them like thistle.

She understood he felt rejected and was doing his utmost to protect himself by pushing her away, but it made no sense. He provided no explanation for his conviction that their partnership was dead because she moved out of the brownstone. And he was doing everything in his power to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

She’d read about other bees in decline. Environmental toxins. Fragmented, disappearing habitat. Diminished and poisoned food sources. Parasites and predators. It was a complex puzzle of multiple cascading stressors; the _how_ of those deaths remained obscure but the _why_ was easy to understand. Of course bees were dying.

The driver swore and swerved when another car cut them off, and the seat belt shoulder strap dug into her neck.

“It was always unlikely they’d survive, given the circumstances,” he said, his thumbnail faintly buzzing as he rubbed it over and over the edge of his jacket.


	22. Cutting It Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [12 july prompt: imported cheese](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1108688.html)  
>  in which I have no shame. or pride. reference to 2x08.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“The package contains half a pound of Swedish moose cheese.”_
> 
> * * *

“So what do you do with it? When you’re not using it as currency, I mean.” Joan hefted the paper-wrapped half pound in one hand, then warily held it up to her nose. “Huh. I expected a stronger smell.” She handed it back to him.

Sherlock returned a squinting sidelong glance as he took it.

“I mean, is there a particular delicacy or recipe it’s good for? Some traditional Swedish fare or something?” She sat down at the kitchen table with her tea and the newspaper.

“It’s just cheese — you can do whatever you usually do with it. I’m thinking omelette.” He finished unwrapping it and was brandishing a paring knife, which he then extended to her, handle-first. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“It’s the most expensive cheese in the world; you don’t want to cut it?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, not wanting to know if he was trying to set her up or not. “I’ll leave it in your capable hands this time.”

He turned back to the stove and started cracking eggs into a bowl. “You might not get another chance; I don’t know how much longer I’ll enjoy this perq.”

She pushed a dormant explosive device on the table out of the way to make room to open the paper to its full extent. “I think I can live with the risk.”


	23. Subtle Are the Links

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [13 july prompt: fun with language](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1113771.html). "Very sorry to knock you up, Watson". Take a line from the original Canon that may have a drastically different meaning now.  
>  In which my shameless & pride-less state continues. I was too lazy to go looking for another line from ACD, and really how could I pass up the cheesetastic opportunity given by the example (from [The Adventure of the Speckled Band](http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Arthur_Conan_Doyle/The_Adventures_of_Sherlock_Holmes/ADVENTURE_VIII_THE_ADVENTURE_OF_THE_SPECKLED_BAND_p1.html)) provided?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“Miss Watson first came to my attention as America’s foremost expert on home security.”_
> 
> * * *

They’d gone into the maternity shop under the pretense of shopping for Sherlock’s sister’s baby shower to determine what involvement, if any, the store manager, a Ms Roylott, had with the suspect. They learned quite a bit about Roylott’s step-daughters but nothing conclusive regarding the case before she started questioning them.

Watson presented her medium-strength fake smile to Roylott and patted Sherlock’s arm where it interlinked with her own. “Yes, we’ve been together three years now. Took us both by surprise, didn’t it?” She turned the smile on him, and he blinked from the intensity, recoiling enough that she tightened her grip to keep him in place.

“And expecting your first? How far along are you, dear?”

It was Watson’s turn to falter this time, and he forged ahead, steadying her with his grip. “We never thought we’d be so fortunate. It’s all very new of course. Early days. We’re not really sharing the news yet, you understand.” Roylott nodded sympathetically. “But we’ll have the summer to prepare.”

Watson didn’t chime in when he paused to offer her the opportunity, and he saw her smile had slipped from tv-commercial-happy to ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ “Uh oh, I know that look. Perhaps we should…” He slipped his arm from hers and curled it around her back, pulling her away from the store manager and looking around the store. Watson pulled a tissue from her pocket and pressed it to her mouth.

“Ah, you poor thing. The restroom’s at the back,” and the manager gestured behind them, and they made their escape.

Watson had stepped out from under his arm by the time they got to the bathroom door, and she hissed at him when he slipped into the little room with her. “What are you doing?”

“It’s a “family” bathroom in a maternity supply shop, and they’re unlikely to barge in when they think you’re in here vomiting. Speaking of which…” and he flipped on the bathroom fan, which was conveniently loud enough to plausibly obscure any expected sound effects. “I was impressed by your improvisation back there. It’s an excellent opportunity to discuss our next move.”

“I wasn’t faking morning sickness, and I’m not talking about you coming in here with me, Sherlock! I’m talking about — this—!” She gestured with both hands on either side of her abdomen. “We absolutely never discussed me pretending to be pregnant!”

Her vehemence rankled. “Very sorry to knock you up, Watson. It’s hardly my first choice either. As my actual first choice demonstrated. But when Ms Roylott made the assumption, I saw the opportunity to improve our cover story. I don’t know what you’re upset about; it’s not the first time we’ve adopted personae to access information.”

“Pretending to have skills I’ve only read about to deceive someone who knows even less about them than I do is one thing. Pretending to be pregnant in front of any number of people _who actually have been_ is something else entirely.”

“So, you’ve never—“ He didn’t think he’d ever seen “stared daggers” illustrated quite so thoroughly before. “Fine. We’ll just keep conversations to the minimum; morning sickness and anxiety about miscarriage are plausible reasons for you to avoid sharing many details at this early stage.”

She paced back and forth across the bathroom, barely three steps each way. After a minute she stopped and sighed. She flushed the toilet and turned on the sink faucet for a few moments, which he took as indication that she agreed with his decision. After another glance at her expression he revised his interpretation. She accepted his logic. He could work with that.

“Okay,” she said. “Due date’s the end of October. It’s too early to know any details, and we can say we haven’t decided if we want to know before or not. Definitely no decisions on names. First or last. Family excited, blah blah blah.” He nodded, and she pulled on her coat sleeves and smoothed the front of her coat. “Guess I’ll have to keep this buttoned.”

“I appreciate your commitment, but that level of backstory is unnecessary for the short time we’ll be doing this.”

“Are you kidding? Pregnancy’s treated like a license to interrogate: open season on inappropriate questions. Like the one that started this whole fiasco. I take it _you_ haven’t spent any time in public with someone who’s expecting?”

He tilted his head in acknowledgment of her greater experience in this context. He’d never paid any attention to pregnancy, other than the standard practices of avoiding it. It was, apparently, rather more volatile a topic than he would have expected, had he ever had reason to bother.

They were both startled by a knock on the door. “Everything all right in there?” Roylott called, and Watson silently waved her hand in an exasperated “I told you so” gesture.

“Yes, thank you, I’m fine.” She opened the door and flashed the medium-strength smile again, her voice giving all indication that she was confident and optimistic about her condition. “We’re fine.” She looked back at him fondly, as if needing to reassure him, roles reversed from their retreat. “He worries so.”

Roylott laughed at him. A little meanly, he thought, like she and Watson knew something he did not. “That’s his job from here on out.”

He stood a little taller and placed his hand on Watson’s shoulder. “It’s what I do.”


	24. A Hard Bargain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [14 july prompt: all for one and one for all](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1117734.html): Have any three characters cooperate to overcome some obstacle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Your mother called me the other day."_
> 
> * * *

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have picked up the phone without checking the caller ID. Then again, this was a persistent crew unlikely to be swayed by simple avoidance. He wouldn’t have gotten off that easy.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Uh, hi. This is Emily Hankins.”

“Yes?”

“Joan’s friend? I got your number from Mary. Mary Watson.”

“Of course. Is there a problem with Joan’s phone? I spoke to her just an hour ago, and she’s not here…”

“No, no, I’m not trying reach her. I wanted to talk to you. Mary and I are trying to arrange something for her birthday. We wondered if you could help with the party.”

“A party. Recent history notwithstanding, I am not much for parties, Ms Hankins. Do you need security? I have a couple of contacts I could put you in touch with.”

“Nooo, I think we’ll okay in that area. We just need your help getting Joan there.”

“You’re throwing her a party she doesn’t wish to attend?”

“It’s just that… every time we try to schedule it, she has an excuse. A work reason why she won’t be able to get there. And I know you two don’t have full control over the cases you take, when the police need your help. But…is it possible to hold the date unless something truly urgent comes along?”

“As you say, we do not have control over criminal activity requiring our involvement—“

“—If it’s a matter of remembering to keep it in mind, Mary would be _happy_ to text you reminders on a weekly or even daily basis—“

“—But if you tell me the next date and time you hope to schedule, I will do my utmost.”

When the call concluded, he turned to Watson, sitting across from him at the lock table, fuming. “One thing I asked you for my birthday, Sherlock. One thing!”

“Apologies, Watson. They’re ruthless, and we’re no match for their schemes. There’s no way around it: You will report for duty Friday evening, at 8, and endure cake and good wishes, whether you like it or not.”


	25. That One Time Sherlock Holmes Met Lucy Liu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 15 July prompt: cracktastic!  
> based on [this tweet by Lucy Liu on Valentine's Day, 2014](https://twitter.com/LucyLiu/status/434470027605979136)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“You know you went a little_ fanboy _back there, right?”_
> 
> * * *

“The whole building is buzzing about her visit; it’s kind of funny.” Joan walked into the room holding two cups from the best coffee shop near the station and turned back to consider Lucy Liu, who was conferring with one of her assistants just outside Gregson’s office. The man was holding a large square of cardboard that had something written on one side, but she couldn’t make it out. “Emily always says she looks like me, but I don’t really see it.”

Sherlock hmmed noncommittally. He was leaning against the conference room filing cabinets, hands in his pockets and gaze down. No — his head was angled down but his gaze was anything but steady, and he was holding tension around his mouth like he did when he knew he was about to be caught out.

She’d just opened her mouth to ask what was going on when Bell leaned in through the half-open door and called them to the interrogation room, and the rest of the afternoon proceeded as it normally did: evasive suspects revealing too much through body language, unwilling witnesses encouraged to speak up, and over-eager on-lookers sharing more than was strictly necessary to get to the bottom of things.

She’d received five different photos of the “crime of passion” as she liked to call it by the end of the day and made sure to post them prominently above the study fireplace. Sherlock took one step into the room as she was admiring her handiwork, let out an exasperated exclamation, and spun around on stocking feet to retreat back to his room. She heard the door bang shut a moment later and laughed. Then she stepped closer and tilted her head to examine the images more closely.

“Maybe a slight resemblance,” she murmured.


	26. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [16 july prompt: Words of Wisdom.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1127075.html) "Beware the fury of a patient man." (John Dryden)  
>  **Warning:** Includes spoilers and speculation for early season 3, influenced by some of the recent notes published in TV Guide and other sources. However, even with the spoilers, I’m pretty sure this is NOT how it’s going to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“You had a partner. Perhaps you still do.”_
> 
> * * *

To be honest, he’d felt the first stirrings of disquiet long before his key wouldn’t turn in the lock.

His companion stood silent a few steps below, wilted in her heavy coat unsuited for this unseasonably hot spring afternoon. He laid his over the tops of their luggage he’d set down next to him and squatted to peer into the lock. Which had been changed. A bead of sweat trickled past his ear.

He straightened up and turned around. “It seems I brought the wrong key. Care to do the honors?” Her faint disbelief and amused smile washed the exhaustion from her face, and she reached into her bag to pull out a kit. He stepped to the side to make room, finding her keenness a temporary balm for his anxiety.

She was more than proficient and in a moment they were standing in the dim foyer, blinking and awkward until their eyes adjusted. He pushed open the inner door slowly, and stepped over the threshold. “Hello?” he called, not loud enough for anyone to hear from above or below.

She gave a little laugh. “You expecting someone?”

Two more steps and he halted at the entrance to the library. A dark green sofa faced the fireplace with a tall narrow table behind it, holding sloppy stacks of mail and a basket of small items: keys, a runner’s armband, a metro card. The two leather chairs were pushed back under the front windows, and Clyde’s habitat was on a low table centered between them. The fireplace mantel was clear but for a pair of slender wrought-iron candlesticks. The walls glowed in a pale shade clearly drawn from a palette to accentuate the colors in the brickwork of the hearth. He released the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when he saw Angus peering dutifully from the far end of the top shelf of the front bookcase.

“Was your caretaker living here?” She nodded toward the woman’s coat hanging off the hook in front of the stairs and walked into the lock room, which, he was relieved to see, still fit that moniker. “This place is huge!”

“That was not my original arrangement with Ms Hudson, but perhaps—“

The one of the stairs in the flight from the kitchen creaked, and they turned in unison to see the woman at the top of the stairwell. She stared at them, and he stared back, feeling exposed by how unaffected she seemed to be.

“Watson. I didn’t— You were moving out; I contracted with Ms Hudson to handle things on my behalf.”

“Oh, she did. She and I made other arrangements.” Her attention shifted, and he felt himself dismissed. “I see you let yourselves in. Hello, I’m Joan.” She reached out her hand.

“Yes. This is my new associate, Kitty Winter; she began training with me some months ago. And this is Joan Watson, my—“

She continued to shake Kitty’s hand as she spoke. “—Former associate. We worked together for a year the last time he was in New York.” Stepping back, she flicked a cold glance at him. “Oh, unless you’ve been back since then and just didn’t have time to stop by.

“But excuse me, Ms Winter, I don’t mean to be rude. The two of us can reminisce some other time.” Her lip twitched; a proposition she clearly found distasteful. “What brings you two here?”

He cleared his throat, trying to remain calm. “My previous assignment has concluded, and other…matters have been resolved; it was time to come home again.”

“Home?” She sounded incredulous.

“For good or ill, New York is more home to me at the moment than London. My library, my work, my… the people I know are all here. And I see _you_ didn’t blow up all my things.” He gave a sudden shake of his head with clenched teeth. While an attempt at levity might not be unwarranted, he could not have done worse than bring up his brother. Her reaction was immediate, a tightening of her spine and her voice, clipping each word tightly.

“No, everything you abandoned is still here. I’ll need to get copies of some of the books and gadgets I’ve found useful, but it won’t take more than a week to figure out what needs to be duplicated.”

“There’s no need for that. I’m not here to turn you out.”

“No, you’re not. Two weeks after you left, your father contacted me. He’d been trying to reach you with the terrible news of your brother’s death and hoped I might have some means to communicate with you. I was still naive enough to think I would hear from you eventually, so I lied to him. He’s been corresponding with ‘us’ ever since. Among other things, he revised his will to make you sole heir and transferred ownership of this property to you. After six months, once I was able to confirm that you were still working on that ‘assignment’ with no plans to cease, I arranged to have ownership transferred again, to me. Those lessons on handwriting analysis and forgery really paid off.” She nodded to Kitty. “You do learn the most unexpectedly useful things.”

She continued past the staircase and opened the inner door.

“Now get out of my house.”


	27. The Past So Strong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [17 july prompt: Truth is stranger than:](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1131068.html) Use [one of these articles](http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=victorian+strangeness) as your inspiration for today's work.  
>  I chose "[Grave Tale of Daughterly Love](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26784493) but dug a little further when the daughter's "Dr" title was used but not discussed.
> 
> As I'm about to embark on a road trip myself, I'm responding to suggestions [elsewhere](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1878528?show_comments=true#comments) that I send Joan and Ms Hudson on one of their own, leaving cryptic clues of their whereabouts for Sherlock. The next week or so of prompts will feature (most likely) 100s and 221bs from various points in their journey.
> 
> wordcount: 221b

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

“How about here?” Leonora tapped the map laid out on the bed, its accordion folds only slightly crinklier than the stiff nylon bedspread beneath. Joan pushed thoughts of her own bedding at home firmly aside and squinted at the tiny print. She and Ms Hudson were having an adventure; butter-soft linens would keep. 

“Ugh, I need my glasses. Is that… Peru? And where are we now?” Leonora tapped several inches to the left. 

“About 400 miles. I’ve got family in Peru.” Leonora finished her off her braid and flipped it back over her shoulder. “Well. If a 120-year old gravestone counts.” 

Joan laughed. “It absolutely counts.” 

“I’d like to visit the historical society. My great-great-great-grandmother was one of the first female physicians there. In all of Indiana, in fact. And that’s not what she’s most famous for.” 

“Well don’t keep me in suspense!” 

“Claire Taylor was best known, or most notorious, for a deathbed wish her mother made: to be buried in her homeland, which was France. But she knew it wasn’t feasible, so she requested in her will that Claire preserve her heart, hands, and feet until she was able to take them. Which she did, three years later. That was 1891.” 

“Peru, Indiana, it is!” 

“And for Sherlock, a little mention of Andean biology.” 


	28. Cause We Won’t Leave This Place Any Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [18 july prompt: honored with a star](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1135870.html)  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson  
> wordcount: 221B

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

“Wait — don’t accelerate yet, I want to get a picture for Sherlock.” Leonora raised her phone to capture the exit sign reading “Wyoming WEST” up ahead. “Got it.” 

“Should we send him our souvenir too?” 

“Oh, no, Joan. If you don’t keep it, I will. In any event, it wouldn’t do; it says ‘Rhode Island’ on the back.” The over-sized key lay on her palm, extending a few inches past on either side. “I didn’t know these things really existed. Or not anymore. Whatever is one to do with it?” 

“Paperweight?” 

Leonora hmmed, disappointed. 

“Someday you can have a massive gate with a huge lock created just for that key.” 

She perked up, smiling. “And I can call my estate ‘Wyoming’ which will perplex the neighbors.” 

“You don’t think naming your estate in the first place might do that?” 

“Not in some circles.” 

“We should go there. You know, the other one. Maybe we’d get a discount. Better yet, once we solve _their_ longest unsolved robbery case, maybe we’ll get a key to the _state_.” 

“It’d be enormous. As big as a bison.” 

“Or maybe they’d just give us an actual bison.” 

“That, we should definitely send to Sherlock.” 

“Oh god. Don’t even— The experiments….Bison cheese.…“ The laughter built between them until they were gasping. 

“So…Next stop, Buffalo?”


	29. Hey I'm Too Weak It's Too Much to Fight Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [19 july prompt: whump whump whump](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1140533.html). Whump Watson. Whump him [sic] well.  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I like Ms Hudson!”_
> 
> * * *

Leonora pushed the mug into the invalid’s hand. “Joan Watson. That’s strep throat three times in four months. You are not taking care of yourself.” 

Propped up with pillows on the library couch and surrounded by folders and files from the current case, Joan sheepishly stage-whispered something about taking a multivitamin, her voice having been lost two days before. 

“The two of you run yourselves ragged, and Sherlock manages to be energized by that, but his metabolism is not your metabolism — it's not _anybody's_ metabolism — and it just won’t do.” Leonora shook out the rumpled fleece blanket, folded it into a rectangle, and draped it over the back of the couch where Joan could reach it if she got chilled. 

“When was the last time you took some time off?” At Joan’s blank look, she sighed impatiently. “All right. What do you do for fun? Any hobbies? Every week it seems Sherlock has some new project in the works, taking something apart or putting something together. Whenever I ask, it’s clear they’re unrelated to whatever case is at hand. What do _you_ do to recharge?” 

Joan stared at the fireplace, biting her lip. “I go running sometimes?” She swallowed and winced, then sipped from the lemon-ginger tea Leonora had given her. “There’s so much to learn, I’m trying to catch up—“ 

“No. That’s— No. Here’s what we’re going to do. Once you are well again and this case is finished, I’m going to teach you my secret strategy for success. Don’t worry: it will be as challenging as any task Sherlock has given you. It might even be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever attempted.” She took a deep breath and straightened to her full height, looking down at Joan with compassion and determination. She’d taught this lesson to others, many times. Type A personalities, over-achievers, so many of whom lived with unspoken fear of imperfection or failure. She didn’t know why she hadn’t realized Joan suffered the same malady. 

“We’re going to get away from all this and go look for a little adventure.”


	30. I'll Just Try to Keep up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [20 july prompt: A sudden change in the weather.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1145536.html)  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson  
> word count: 100

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I like Ms Hudson!”
> 
> * * *

“Is this safe?” 

“Do we care? It’s a tornado warning in Kansas! What could go wrong?” Joan grabbed the dried soybean pod off the windshield before the wind swept it away, to put in the box of “evidence” they were collecting for Sherlock. 

“At the risk of making you sorry you dragged me out here, I should perhaps admit the one hobby I do have: I love those storm-chasers reality shows.” 

Leonora double-checked the knot on her head scarf, a vivid pattern of bright flowers. Silk, of course.“I’m going to need a more utiliarian hairstyle for this.”


	31. I'm Taking My Time Taking It All In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [21 july prompt: constrained compassion](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1150828.html)   
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

They pulled over to stretch their legs and try to figure out where to find the closest gas station. “This GPS is as lost as we are.” Joan turned off the device and checked her phone again.

“Can you get a signal?” Leonora was slowly picking her way around sagebrush and something that looked like little sunflowers.

“Nope. It just confirms we are in fact in the middle of nowhere.”

“A very beautiful nowhere. I love that smell!” Leonora slowly turned, taking in the windswept grasses, the clean dry scent of sage, and the mountains ringing the horizon. “Oh Joan!” She pointed off to the east. “Pronghorn!”

A little while later, they were reviewing the map spread over the hood when a battered yellow pickup truck approached from the opposite direction and slowed to stop across the road.

“Y’all need directions?”

“Oh heavens, yes.” The young woman behind the wheel blinked in surprise at receiving the full force of Leonora’s regard, and Joan suppressed a smile at the contrast between Leonora’s ready confession and her own impulse to appear savvy and self-sufficient. It was clear which of them was the real New Yorker. She realized she didn’t know where Leonora grew up. Probably not Queens.

Luisa oriented them and gave a couple of suggestions for places to stay, with a shy recommendation for the cantina her aunt and uncle ran about a hundred miles up ahead.

“A hundred miles,” Leonora said, half in disbelief. “I’ve gone a hundred blocks for dinner before, but a hundred miles….And probably not even a hundred people on the road between here and there.”

“I’m applying to college there. NYU.” Luisa sounded almost defiant. “I want to try something different.”

“Have you been to New York?” Joan asked.

“No, but my best friend’s brother went there for a model UN thing. He said he hated it, but he also hates all this,” and she waved her arm around them, “so….”

“Not a reliable source,” Joan nodded. “Well, it certainly is different from this! But you like it here?”

“Oh, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. For after, I mean. But I’ve never _been_ anywhere else, so I figure I should test it, right? And you like it? New York City?”

“New York will be a good test! It’s an unbelievable, densly packed, _noisy_ place. I’ve lived there all my life and can’t imagine living anywhere else, either. And this is my first time in Wyoming. Which so far seems to be an unbelievable, deserted, _windy_ place.”

“Everybody says that about the wind, if they’re not from here. And they talk about the sky.”

“I can’t stop looking at the horizon,” Leonora said. “I had to have Joan drive.”

“Ha! I told you to pull over and switch the third time you started crossing the yellow line, you mean, because you were looking at the sky instead of the road.”

“I just have to soak it all in. There’s no way to capture it. A blank white card might do; it’s as good as any photograph could be to try containing all this…” and she turned away again to continue scanning the landscape.

Luisa raised her brows to Joan, who watched Leonora fondly. “Don’t mind her. She’s a true romantic, in love with nature and everything sublime.” She grabbed her bag through the backseat window and fished out a business card. “Here — if you end up in New York, let me know. I’d be happy to take a poor student to lunch as thanks for helping us out today.”

“Consulting detective,” Luisa read aloud. “Are you out here for work?”

Leonora turned back to reply before Joan could speak. “Yes! We are on the case of the missing vacation, and I think we’re making great progress.”


	32. Waiting Place (So Call Me When You Get Where You're Going)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [22 july prompt: A Seussian Situation.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1154504.html) Incorporate Dr. Seuss or one of his works somehow into today's entry. A Cat in a Hat or a 500 Hats? A Grinch or a Sneech? It's up to you!  
>  I chose the obvious and then tried to make it a little less so. [_Oh the Places You’ll Go!_](http://www.worldcat.org/title/oh-the-places-youll-go/oclc/20169007) ([text](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080731221319AA4le7Z))  
>  word count: 100  
> The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson. Interlude: In which Sherlock still hasn't figured it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _She makes her living as something of a muse._
> 
> * * *

Holmes turned the card over, ran his fingers over it, reviewed it under the magnifying lamp, sniffed it; tasted. All his faculties came to the same conclusion: a plain blank postcard, the sort purchased already franked. Addressed to him in Ms Hudson’s hand, like the rest. She used a ball point, not the fountain pen she normally favored. Postmark three days prior: Yankton, South Dakota. He flicked the card onto to the table with the rest of the evidence and scratched his scalp with both hands, sighing. Watson had insisted it wasn’t about him. His experience demurred. Yanked-on, indeed.


	33. Well You Know I'd Never Say It Out Loud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [23 july prompt: Eat Raw Meat and Dance His War-Dance](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1158455.html). From the original ACD to modern-day adaptations, the treatment of non-white characters in Sherlock Holmes (examples including "The Sign of Four," "The Blind Banker") can be racially problematic if not downright racist. Here's your chance to "fix" such a portrayal, or to deal with the subject of race from any version of SH  
>  One of the inspirations for today’s entry came from a [Planet Money podcast about immigration reform](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/15/172108399/episode-436-if-economists-controlled-the-borders). May have veered a bit OOC in this one, though we have so little character to work with w/r/t Ms Hudson. :-\  
> The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

“If you don’t mind my asking, does that happen often?” Leonora sipped her bottled iced tea with the bright turquoise straw she pulled from the mini-mart’s rack of condiments and utensils. Joan joked she was going to start timing how long she stood in front of glass-doored coolers trying to choose the best from the usually limited options. 

“In there, you mean?” Joan stuck to refilling her steel bottle at water fountains but could not deny her own thorough deliberation when deciding between an ice cream sandwich or something on a stick. “Depends. Almost never at home. But outside New York, it can happen any time. Especially at popular tourist spots. They don’t often ask me to say something chinese, though; usually they just talk slower and louder. Last week somebody wanted me to pay for the gas in cash because they didn’t take ‘any of those asian credit cards.’” 

“What did you do?” 

“That time, I just paid in cash, because I was tired, and it was late, and it wasn’t a big deal, in terms of the finances. For the slow-talkers, sometimes I pull out my full Queens on them, which half the time they can’t understand any better than if I actually were still learning English.” 

“I have been fascinated by regional variants of English we’ve come across on this trip. Almost makes me want to research linguistics of modern languages…” 

“Sherlock’s always trying on accents and languages. He speaks Mandarin; I should have called him up in there and had him say something ‘chinese’ to the clerk. He could have given her the lecture on the history of immigration laws and Chinese laborers in the United States he gave me once.” Joan shook her head at the recollection of having to convince him her family history offered sufficient coverage of that topc. 

“Hmm. Is he concerned about his own status?” 

“You mean, immigration? He’s never said a thing. I don’t even know that he has a green card or if he does, what kind of visa it is. I assume the family fortune greased some wheels.” Joan crumpled up her ice cream wrapper and lobbed it into the trash can. “For all his ranting about the evils of CEOs and bankers, he can as oblivious of his own privilege as accuses them of being.” 

“I wish… I’m sorry you have to deal with that, and I’m sorry I hadn’t noticed sooner. I should have.” She blocked Joan’s attempt to reassure her. “No, I should have because I still remember it. I had it. Perhaps not with that added buffer of wealth, but when I stepped away from that life, I realized what it did once I didn’t have it any more. White male privilege. If there were some way to let everyone truly perceive the impact it has—” 

“—The world would be a very different place.”


	34. I Can't Believe What's Happening Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [24 July prompt: on the track](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1161923.html) ([picture of railroad tracks](http://blog.mugnai.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tunnel2.jpg) surrounded by green growth forming a canopy over the tracks as far as the eye can see; photo visible at the link).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

Joan forgot where she was at first, suddenly awake and confused by the shadows around her. Then the orange parking lot lights seeping at the edges of the stiff vinyl-backed curtains and Leonora’s slow breathing in the motel room’s other bed overlaid the green tunnel of her dream. She closed her eyes to picture it again, feel the soft breeze that made the leaves around her shimmer. It was almost like a recurring dream she had as a child, trapped in a tunnel, unable to see ahead and feeling vibrations in the tracks of a train coming swiftly behind. This time, the green was comforting and vibrant with possibility, and the path felt right. It didn’t matter the forest framing it was impenetrable, because there was no need to leave the track. It would bend and grow with her. 

Leonora mumbled something and rolled over. They shared a room most nights to save money, and Joan learned that Leonora talked in her sleep. Not loud or long enough to wake her up, but of the two of them, Leonora also appeared to sleep better, with fewer interruptions, judging by the number of times Joan was awake to hear her gentle low murmuring. Or perhaps it was her voice that set Joan’s subconscious down the forest path this time. It was the sort of place you might expect to see nymphs and woodland gods. Or even, some might say, a muse. Not that she needed a muse, and anyway Leonora was on vacation. Or hiatus, or no longer doing that sort of “muse” work. Rather she took care of their home, and asked Joan questions that made her see her circumstances in a new light, and offered impressions and suggestions that were kind and encouraging and sympathetic. Sherlock could handle that second point well enough, although he often forgot the asking questions part and simply told her how to understand her circumstances. So maybe not quite well enough. But Leonora brought useful order to their chaos and even her curiosity about unexplained things helped jumpstart Joan’s desire to find those explanations. That was nothing like being a muse. Was it? 

The clock radio’s red numbers said 2:47; not the best time to grill Leonora on her intentions. She didn’t think Leonora had pushed her to make this trip following one of Sherlock’s grand schemes. Her stomach seized at the very thought. He might fake any number of emotions, but by now he was likely going stir-crazy without an audience to witness him pontificate. He was certainly self-aware enough to know he needed that audience and therefore sending her away would be a terrible inconvenience to his process. So Leonora wasn’t doing Sherlock’s bidding. What was she doing, then? 

Joan took a deep breath and released it slowly, eyes closed and visualizing being back in the green. That was where she wanted to be. Where she wanted her heart to be: with a clear path to follow and the promise of potential ahead. As she drifted off she thought she’d need to find a way to thank Leonora for leading her here, but she didn’t remember any of this when she woke four hours later to the pained gurgling of the coffee maker on the bathroom counter and Leonora's cheerful "Good morning! Where shall we go today?"


	35. But Now I Don't Think Too Much Of The Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [25 july prompt: Moved by Music.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1165976.html)  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

When they passed the “Rest Area, 2 Mi” sign, Leonora cleared her throat conspicuously. 

“Joan.” 

“I’m fine! I can make it.” Joan gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, leaning forward slightly and blinking rapidly. 

“Joan Watson, you’re going to exit at that rest stop. I don’t want to end up in a ditch.” 

“But—“ 

“No buts. I can practically hear your eyelids rasping over your eyes.” 

“It’s been a long day, Leonora. Any chance you’d…” 

“It’s your rule, and it’s a good one. Driver picks the music. You chose silence, and I didn’t complain.” 

“Exactly. Silence is golden. Silence is kind. Restful.” 

“Some of us enjoy a little distraction from time to time.” 

Joan sighed in resignation and flipped the indicator light on to exit the highway. When the car stopped she pushed back with her arms and pressed back against the seat, eyes closed. “I still feel like we’re moving.” 

“You drove three hours longer than you should have. No wonder.” 

“That should tell you something.” 

“Indeed it does. Meet you back in ten?” 

Leonora got out of the car and headed off toward the rough granite building, gracefully stretching first one arm and then the other behind her head. Joan closed her eyes again and savored the silence as if it would be her last. It was amusing the first few shifts, but after days of it, she was at wits’ end. Every time. Hours and hours and hours. Not even Sherlock could have deduced it. 

K-Pop. 

She pushed the car door open and got out, stretching backwards and forwards, hamstrings and quads. A car pulled up in the next parking space, and she could hear the bitter argument before the engine stopped, even through closed windows. The couple were practically screaming at each other in a car filled with bags, boxes, and cigarette smoke, and she hurried past before she could hear what it was about. At the entrance to the restrooms, a harried woman tried to calm one shrieking toddler as an older girl sobbed something about the vending machine having no Hershey bars. Joan kept on walking, wanting to make a circuit of the greenspace of picnic tables to get the blood flowing before refilling her water bottle, emptying her bladder, and getting back in the car. 

Two more crying children amplified by the tiled walls of the restroom and another cranky couple later, she slipped into the passenger seat. Leonora was already belted in and passed her a peach from the cooler in the trunk with a smile. Late afternoon sun filtered through the trees in front of the parking area, filling the car: it was a clean well-lighted space, and the company, music-taste notwithstanding, was all she could wish for in a travelling companion. 

“I’m sorry about that. I was tired, you were right, and I should have stopped driving hours ago, before I got so crabby.” 

“That’s all right, I’m the same when my blood sugar gets too low. Ready to go?” 

“Yep.” 

Leonora put the car in reverse and reached out to turn on the radio as she paused and shifted into drive. The first notes started, and Joan broke into a grin. She caught Leonora’s eye as she turned her head from looking behind for oncoming traffic. 

“You’re welcome,” she said, steering smoothly past the parked cars as Beethoven’s Ninth began.


	36. So You're Travelin' On, Travelin' On Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [26 july prompt: blood on the snow](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1169285.html) (Use a fairy tale or horror story as the inspiration for today's entry).  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson. Interlude: the game is afoot  
> word count: 100

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"She is something of a muse."_
> 
> * * *

“It’s evidence of a kind. A trail of bread crumbs.” Holmes held up a brightly colored plastic panflute. “There are ten municipalities in the United States named Peru. This item is made from corn-based plastic, which could indicate one of the five Perus in corn-growing states of the midwest.” He considered the instrument for a moment. “Or possibly the rainbow of colors for the pipes indicates a state with marriage equality, a different five Perus.” He rattled a dry seed pod carefully. “It is an engaging puzzle.” 

Bell gave him a wry smile. “They know what you like.”


	37. But I'll Be Travelin' On, Travelin' With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [27 july prompt: dish of the day](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1173432.html)  
>  word count: 221b  
> The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

Leonora set the offending item down after one bite. “Well that just won’t do.” 

“It’s kind of remarkable, isn’t it? They didn’t even try to get it right.” 

“Reminds me of a medieval carving of an elephant at Salisbury Cathedral, by someone who had only heard a description of the creature because the feet are all wrong.” 

Joan hid her smile behind the little daily newspaper she’d picked up, front page news of kids on a joy-ride down main street after 10pm. She turned to the back page for the syndicated national weather report. “Looks like bad weather all to the west, but the east is clear if we can stay ahead of those storms.” 

“East it is, then.” Leonora took a sip of coffee. “Mmm. This,” she gestured with the cup, “I must say, is quite good.” 

Joan laid the paper on the diner table and contemplated the little weather map. “Oh, it looks like it’s going to be lovely in New York today.” 

“Is it?” Leonora was carefully neutral, nudging her unsatisfactory breakfast aside and pulling the menu out of the condiment tray. “I’m going to order something else. You?” 

“No thanks.” She looked out of the diner window a moment and turned back. “But maybe it’s time to get you back to the land of _real_ bagels.”


	38. Hey Don't Be Too Hard On Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [28 july prompt: it's all in the details](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1177785.html)  
>  word count: 3x100  
> The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!_
> 
> * * *

**Obsessive**  
“I don’t like not knowing our itinerary.” Joan tapped her pen on her notebook, peppering the top margin with tiny dots. 

“I understand.” Leonora filled the little cooler with containers of fruits and vegetables, taking them all out again, and rearranging them with icepacks and bottles of juice and some dark chocolate. 

“Where’re we going to stop tonight?” 

“Don’t worry.” She took out a bottle, repositioned another container, and put it back. “Adequate lodging is much easier to find than adequate food.” 

“But—“ 

“Really, we’re going to have an adventure, and you’ll like it.” 

Joan glowered, tapping out more dots. 

**Compulsive**  
Joan tilted her seat back a notch, squirmed, and raised it up again. Moved her bag from her lap to the floor by her right foot, then over to the left. Raised the window up and down and up and down. 

“Why don’t you choose some music?” Leonora adjusted the rearview mirror, craning her neck with each new position before making another tiny adjustment. 

“No, driver picks. You tell me, and I’ll queue it up. That’s the rule.” 

“Hmm.” The side mirrors now. Over and over. 

“Are we almost there yet?” 

Leonora smiled and checked the rearview mirror once more. 

**Disorder**  
One of the beds was strewn with remnants of the cooler, the other covered by half the contents of Leonora’s suitcase. The connecting door between their rooms was ajar, draped with a towel. Joan felt comfortably frumpy in her well-worn grey t-shirt and shorts next to Leonora, almost stately in a silk nightgown and white housecoat as she repacked her clothes. Joan surveyed the mess and felt the last tight band of stress release, finding her earlier anxiety suddenly hilarious. 

“You really don’t have a secret plan hidden in this chaos, do you.” 

“I really don’t.” 

Joan laughed.


	39. If You Notice That I'm Falling Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [29 july prompt: fraught with possibilities](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1181370.html) choose one or more of _brothers_ , cleaning house, _tools of the trade_ , nightmares, _friends in high places_.  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I like Ms Hudson!”_
> 
> * * *

“How did you manage this again? I think the elevation at the Eisenhower Tunnel was getting to me, and I can’t remember a thing you said about it last night.” Joan set up the practice lock Sherlock built for her and laid out her wallet of picks on the mahogany dining table but kept staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Rocky Mountains arrayed outside with the full moon setting just above. “I could live here. I bet they have crimes, right? I could totally solve crimes and still have this view.”

Leonora brought over two mugs of coffee. “It belongs to someone I used to know… That is, I still know him, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here now, but we don’t see each other very often these days. Moved on, I suppose.”

“It’s nice when a break-up isn’t the disaster so many turn out to be.” There was a _click_ , and Joan pulled back her tools to reset the mechanism, giving the tumblers a spin before her next attempt.

“Oh, we weren’t involved like that. Neither of us— That is, I helped him find his way with a project he was stalled on, and I did live in his townhouse for a time, but in a guest suite. We got on very well creatively but that’s where the sparks stayed.” She smiled, remembering. “It’s one of my favorite recollections, the time Walter and I worked together.”

Joan’s hands stilled. “How—“ She swallowed, then hesitated a moment before setting the picks down and resting her hands on her thighs. “How do you know when your work with someone is…finished?”

“With Walter, it was simple: we both realized when he no longer needed my support to get the wheels off the ground. Most of the time it’s not so easy, although it doesn’t have to be fraught.” She gave a little smile and glanced at Joan. “Don’t you just love that word? Fraught. Such satisfyingly dense connotations.” Her gaze softened. “I assume this is not an entirely hypothetical question?”

Joan sighed. “It’s mostly hypothetical. I just worry—” Leonora laughed. “Yes, fine, you’re shocked. It’s just. Sherlock and I had a particular temporary arrangement, and now it’s become something indefinite, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.” She held up one hand. “It _seems_ like a good thing, don’t get me wrong. I love this work. But the way I got here… I don’t believe the ends always justify the means, but when they do, how can you be sure?”

“It was my understanding that there was an explicit choice for your arrangement to become ‘indefinite’ as you put it although that word is imprecise with respect to the aspect of indefiniteness you mean.”

“You lost me.”

“That you’re learning to be a consulting detective seems rather definite, as does your living arrangement and your commitment to the work. If I understand you, it’s the timeframe that troubles you, moving from a clear start and finish to something open-ended, yes?”

“Yeah. It’s almost as if that initial stage never ended and instead we just overlaid another phase on top of it, but the first one’s still running in the background.” She moved her fingers lightly over the row of picks on the table as if they were piano keys. “It’s still the foundation for what we have now, and that limits what ‘now’ can be.”

“How is that any different from any choice we make? We’re constantly closing doors to other possibilities with each fork we choose. If you hadn’t decided to be a detective, we wouldn’t be here now: all the choices leading to sitting in this room and admiring that view wouldn’t have happened.”

“I should know better than to argue with a philosopher,” Joan grumbled.

“You can blame family dinners for that. My parents loved to debate, but my brother was the one who found the logical equivalent of a slam-dunk every time. He could argue his way into or out of anything."

“I didn’t know you have a brother.”

“We’re not in touch. I’m the youngest; he left home before I graduated from high school. He was a merchant marine for a time and never really settled anywhere, even after. Or not as far as I know. I don’t know if it was a choice of his or one of mine that severed the cord, but along the way we lost contact.”

“I don’t want that to happen to me and Sherlock.” Joan blinked in surprise at her own vehemence. “Well that sounded definite.”

“There’s nothing that says you _have_ to have closure. Some relationships don’t finish, in that sense. Perhaps you and Sherlock will simply continue working together.”

“Just that easy?”

“I didn’t say it would be easy for you. We are talking about Sherlock. But maybe you can stop waiting for that other shoe to drop and go looking for it instead. Oh my, no, that’s a weak excuse for an analogy. You know what I’m trying to say?”

“I think you’re telling me what _I_ heard at the dinner table: Get back to work and don’t borrow trouble.”

“That’ll do, although there may be other options than ‘continue as is’ or ‘stop’; changing the terms of the arrangement is always possible.”

“Sherlock’s not so good at accepting changes he doesn’t make.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy for him, either.”


	40. You Could Never Be A Face In The Crowd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [30 july prompt: A trip to the theatre.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1185750.html)   
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!"_
> 
> * * *

Joan stood outside the little building, once a Carnegie library now repurposed as a community center and performance space. As thanks for identifying which of the back windows was the point of entry for a series of break-ins, the B&B owner gave them tickets to a play put on by the local theatre group. The center’s glass-covered announcement board had a “quote of the month” page that declared _Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science_ , which was fine as far as old R. W. Emerson went but irked her nonetheless. Leonora arrived and stood next to her, looking over the board.

“Women love to wander, and that is the seed of discovery,” she added.

“Oh, I like that! But now it’s even more annoying that they left off the rest of the quote.”

Leonora blushed. “No they didn’t. That’s me. I just made it up.”

“Really? It’s perfect! It could be our motto. We need to get t-shirts.” Leonora laughed, brushing off Joan’s enthusiasm. “No, I’m serious.” Joan’s giddiness subsided as she thought about it. “If I were one to get tattoos, I’d seriously consider putting that in ink. If you approved, of course.”

Leonora shook her head, still pink-cheeked. She ducked her head. “I dabble a bit with verse. From time to time.”

“Well you should do _something_ with it. ‘Women love to wander, and that is the seed of discovery.’ Should we send it to Sherlock as evidence?”

“I don’t think it meets the criteria. He couldn’t possibly deduce anything about our location from that.”

Joan pursed her lips before nodding. “All right. But he did admit to me once that not everything is deducible.” They started walking to the entrance when Joan stopped. “I know! We’ll get a t-shirt made and send him _that_. He can try to triangulate based on the IP-address of the computer we’ll use to place the order. Or something.”

“And we can include this in the design,” and Leonora leaned in with an outstretched arm, snapping a selfie of the two of them, grinning, the word ‘wonder’ just visible in the background.


	41. I'll Keep Travelin' On, Travelin' To You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [31 july prompt: The End in the Beginning.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1189544.html) Every story's beginning is some other story's end.  
>  The continuing adventures of Joan Watson and Leonora Hudson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I like Ms Hudson!"_
> 
> * * *

Leonora was the first stop after they returned the rental car. Joan asked the driver to wait, and they both got out, standing awkwardly for a moment until Leonora let go of her bag and extended her arms to wrap Joan in a hug. The first week of the trip they only ever touched accidentally, but somewhere in the middle conversation expanded to include nudges, pokes, taps, and the occasional comforting pat. And then Leonora had the brilliant idea of trading off neck rubs each night, and Joan slid back easily into the habit of physical contact. She’d been demonstrative as a kid but grew out of it as the need for emotional self-preservation grew. Now she often went weeks without touching another person.

“Thank you so much for everything. All of it.” She gave one last squeeze before releasing the hug. Leonora held on a bit longer.

“It was the best trip I’ve been on for some time. I thought I was merely making sure you got the break you needed but it ended up showing me what I need to do, too.”

They made plans to meet for lunch in three days to help each other with next steps, and Joan got back in the cab and gave the address for the brownstone.

She turned to look up at the building as the cab pulled away. In the front window, someone pulled a shirt on over a tattooed back and for a moment it was the first morning with her latest client who had started his post-rehab life a few hours earlier than scheduled. Then he turned around, and it was the expression she’d seen a few days later through holding cell glass when he realized she’d decided to continue despite the wrecked car. And then the window was empty, as if she’d imagined it all, but the door burst open and Sherlock bounded down the stairs, wearing the t-shirt they’d sent him.

“Looks like we got the right size,” she said, her free hand raised to point at the shirt, and he captured it in a handshake with both of his, triggering another memory. His grip was as firm and steady as it had been that first morning, but this time he looked at her closely, his expression just as steady as his warm hands.

She tried to imagine greeting him with a hug, but then he grabbed her suitcase and started back up the stairs, talking over his shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse the state of the library. I was looking for something.” He held the door as she plodded up. “I intended to right things by now, but I got bored….And Angus is _not_ an exacting taskmaster.”

“Oh.” She stopped short in the entrance to the room. “What was wrong with the way Leonora had arranged it?” Every shelf in the library was bare; stacks of books and piles of objects covered the floor, with a few narrow pathways providing egress. She pitched her voice louder so he could hear it on his way back from taking her suitcase upstairs. “It looks like a _lot_ more books when you arrange them this way.”

“I did not ‘arrange’ them; as I said, I was looking for something. Which, unfortunately, was not there. I started searching the study, but then Gregson called.” He suddenly turned and flipped up the cushions on the settee by the stairs but set them back down again with an aggravated sigh.

“We have a case?” Joan sat on the unhelpful couch and noticed the US map posted above the locks with pins, string, and some familiar items attached to it.

“Had. _I_ had a case, that is, the NYPD had a case, well, four cases since your departure, all of which are now solved. But then there was a bee situation, which led to a honey problem. And then strange things began arriving in my mail.” He gestured to his shirt. “This arrived today.”

“Sounds like we have a lot to catch each other up on.”

“Indeed. Please get comfortable. We’re going to be here for a long time.”


	42. Between the Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [amnesty prompt: hidden words](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1192747.html)   
>  Assumes knowledge of 2x12.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re leaving something unsaid.”_
> 
> * * *

Sherlock has a hundred tells, and although the letters have never been mentioned again, Joan knows when he receives a new one and when he composes a reply. Whether he still mails what he writes is another story, and she can’t bring herself to check the hives to see if he’s placed his words in there with _hers_. She honestly doesn’t want to know what they say to each other; it could only hurt, in a hundred different ways. And it would hardly make it easier to maintain her indignation when he invades her privacy if she were to cross that line. But she has no qualms about deciphering the particular set to his shoulders, the tic in his jaw, the subtle shift in his accent and speech patterns. If she were to overlook any of those, the uptick in cutting remarks and disdain for procedure make it all too clear. And when he retreats into icy claims of special-case scenarios that only he experiences, she knows the poisoner has hit her mark. 

* 

Watson has only one tell, and the fact that it essentially indicates itself in an infuriating self-referential loop is no help in the deciphering: when there’s something she’s not saying, she says nothing at all. 

Holmes is ashamed to admit it took him a while to notice; in those early days, her occasional reticence meant a reprieve from actively ignoring her attempts to engage him in sobriety work, and the underpinnings of that stay were irrelevant. The revelation that her dismissal from medicine could have been temporary was the first instance he noted, and gradually his catalog of observations grew. In some cases new data makes clear what she hasn’t been saying about a topic, as with her medical license. In others, her own sense of fairness prompts her to speak up. In almost every case, he’s been utterly unable to deduce what’s hidden in plain sight, as it were. At least he’s getting better at observing when it’s happening. 

The only viable option is a direct approach, but such attempts to solicit what she’s not saying have had decidedly mixed results. A few actual successes (which moments bring unexpected warmth in the recollection) but more often tightened lips or determined exits. He’s been tempted to seek advice but fears further correspondence about Watson with the particular contact he has in mind could cause irreparable harm if Watson learned he’d consulted her, even for research purposes. For that matter, even without discovery he can’t deny her involvement is likely to produce toxic effects. There would be no point, in the end. Despite extensive expertise in dissecting and manipulating others, she continues to be as incapable of anatomizing Joan Watson as he.


	43. Last Pass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [amnesty prompt: stellar. The Crab Nebula.](http://watsons-woes.livejournal.com/1192747.html)  
>  Messier catalogued the Crab Nebula as a “comet-like object” in 1758, although it had been observed by others as early as 1054 CE.  
> Takes place during the "orbit" scene in 2x24. I wanted to understand how Sherlock figured out what happened in that room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"You know I'm not staying, right?_
> 
> * * *

When Holmes learned he was to be shackled with a sober companion, he expected to be dragged down by a deadweight who would hamper his every move and confound his plans to reestablish himself as a consulting detective. Instead, Watson was a wonder, an unexpected guide through the wilderness, who not only did not hold him back but actually showed him how to succeed. It was not his best moment, but he didn’t lie that terrible night with Moran when he told her nothing would have been possible without her. He once imagined her as a comet swinging through his ecliptic, bright, steady, miraculous. But a comet has its own path, and she is determined to continue on hers. That doesn’t stop him from from asking her to stay, one last time.

From her first words he knows she’s achieved escape velocity, and as she continues he can’t maintain eye contact: he’s too late. He twitches when she says there are consequences ( _it has its costs_ ) and looks up at the wall when she says they will work this out ( _no one can accept something like that forever_ ). But she’s standing in the doorway and he knows all too well that when people leave, they don’t come back (which is why he’s so baffled by Mycroft’s recent behavior, disregarding all the protocols so painstakingly negotiated through avoidance and insult over thirty years.).

Watson herself is whole and strong as he never will be. No satellite of his; she’s moving on of her own volition, and it’s their partnership dissolving like the comet’s last pass around the sun, shedding itself in a stream of ice and rock and transformation as its orbit decays until nothing’s left. The image of comet debris, of bits of rock arcing through space, reveals the cause of the blood splatter on the wall. Even with one foot out the door she helps him discern what he needs, what _they_ need, for the work, if he can lay claim to “they” when she’s well past his reach and almost out of sight. He can’t deny the bittersweet lift of his heart as the missing piece of the puzzle catalyzes his understanding of the whole. The work is always so beautiful.


	44. Sunday (Joan's Week)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [amnesty prompt: John Constable]()

[Sunday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1585052/chapters/4591698), which is the last chapter of another fic, "Joan's Week," is my fill for this prompt. Instead of posting it twice, I'm just linking to the chapter here. Sorry for the extra clicking and thanks for reading. 


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